The recent banning of 5 Internet sites by Tehran’s Public Prosecutor on charges that they are “poisoning” the elections atmosphere, which was followed by similar threats made by the minister of Islamic Guidance, attests to the growing power of the Internet in Iran’s world of media.
In the five years since the Internet has been established in Iran, many plans to control it have been launched, and all have failed. After Khatami’s administration, the first thought that came to the minds of the new right-wingers was to limit the Internet lines, reduce the expansion of fiber optics and escape commitments to expand high band width resources and communications facilities. But they soon realized that the needs of the military-defense, industry-services, and education and research sectors of the country for cyber resources were so high that they could not minimize their availability and usage.
At the same time, policies and projects that had succeeded in the realm of television (controlling them) did not work for the Internet. The creation of hundreds of pro-government and right-wing Internet sites did not diminish the interest of Internet users in using independent websites.
In the nineties, the Iranian regime had tried for 2 or 3 years to dissuade the public from installing satellite dishes to gain access to foreign sources of information through police tactics. But those failed and it came up with another strategy which was partly successful. It began showing foreign serial programs and all international sporting events on its own government channels, thus making it unattractive for the public to watch the foreign channels, whose content many could not follow because of language limitations. So after a passage of about a decade and a half, one can say that even though the government news media is one sided and its programs are propagandist, the entertainment aspect of the controls have worked.
The same can be said of Persian speaking foreign media such as the Voice of America. The VOA which may appear to be successful has turned into a propaganda tool because professionally it has the same mission as the Iranian government television network. Rather than producing independent programs, it has become a propaganda tool and thus has a limited appeal among Iranians. With this state of affairs, one can say that the professional and non-ideological aspect of news dissemination in Persian is now absent. The Iranian public is thus deprived of a Persian news media that is independent and credible. The visual and propagandist media is lost in its extreme and non-professional activities. So the only outlet that is left for the news-hungry Iranians is the Internet. The Internet remains and independent source and is thus effective in reaching Iranians.
So the publishing media is now controlled by the Iranian government which has tens and tens of its own publications. It also controls the national radio and television network which is for all practical purposes under the monopoly of the right-wing elements of the regime. Iranian opposition television stations outside Iran have little impact on Iranian society because they are now very distant from the actual events inside Iran and not in touch with what is really going on. So despite all the controls that the regime has imposed on public access to the Internet, this media remains its greatest concern to the effect that it fears that even this narrow channel could suddenly create the eruption that it most fears.
Even from the perspective of the rulers of Iran, the practice of filtering websites, arresting Internet activists, and identifying websites that it deems inappropriate have not produced the desired results. And this is why on the eve of the parliamentary elections in Iran on March 14, the government is increasing its efforts to control the Internet, which it will probably intensify even more.
