You don't have to be British to listen to the BBC. Some tune in because they trust it to be more “objective” than other stations. Some tune in because they are convinced Britain still rules the waves and therefore its voice can reveal the secrets of the future. During the 1979 revolution, eyewitnesses noted that looters invariably left radio shops untouched so that prospective consumers could continue to buy wirelesses and thereby tune in to the Persian Service. It seemed as if the whole country—whether conservative or revolutionary, secular or religious, leftist or rightist—was glued to the BBC. Hedayat Matin-Daftari reminiscences that many listened to the BBC as a “religious duty,” and taxi drivers often stopped and apologized because they had to listen to the BBC news.
Annabelle Srenberny and Massoumeh Torfeh, in this timely and highly readable and well-researched book, examine the role of the station in Iran during the past seventy years—from its very inception in 1940 to the present decade. They focus special attention on four crucial episodes: the abdication of Reza Shah in 1941; the oil nationalization crisis of 1951‒53; the revolution of 1979; and the contested presidential elections in 2009. They also have a chapter on the Persian service in Afghanistan.
The underlying question throughout the book is how far the Persian Service was beholden to, or independent of, the British government—its sole financier. In other words, how far did the Persian Service function as a government propaganda organ or as a source of impartial and reliable information. In the words of the authors, the book tries to explore the “tension” and the “inelegant dance between financial control versus editorial independence” (p. 10). The authors rely in the most part, especially for the historical sections, on archival sources of the BBC and the Foreign Office, and in small part, especially for more recent periods, on personal experiences working for the Persian Service.
The main hurdle the book faces is that these four episodes occurred in very different historical contexts, and therefore the relationship between the British government and the Persian Service varied drastically. Outsiders, especially in Iran, often overlooked this, jumping to the conclusion that the BBC and the British government were intrinsically linked, with the former always acting as the obedient voice of the latter.
The first case came at the height of World War II, at a time when Britain was fighting a life and death struggle. At the time there was no pretense of objective reporting and impartial analysis. After all, George Orwell learnt much about Newspeak and Doublespeak while working for the BBC Indian Department. Some suspect his Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four was modeled on the BBC building in Portland Place, London. It is not surprising that in August 1941—immediately after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran—when the BBC Persian Service began to describe Reza Shah in no uncertain terms as “autocratic,” “cruel,” and “corrupt,” well-placed politicians in Iran rightly took this to mean that Britain wanted the old shah out. Reza Shah, seeing the writing on the wall, promptly abdicated in the hope of saving the throne for his son. The son lived with the conviction that the British, through the BBC, had engineered his father’s demise. Of course, the alternative could have been the entry of the Red Army into Tehran to demand something more than the removal of one shah. Asa Briggs, later in his famous History of Broadcasting, wrote that this was probably the first time in history that a ruler had been hurled from the throne by radio.
In the second case, the British government and the BBC were equally collaborative. The latter throughout the crisis loudly echoed the former's line that nationalization of the oil industry would be disastrous for Iran—that it would be financially bankrupt the government, that the country would not have the technical know-how to run the industry, and that Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq had refused a series of fair and just offers for compromise. After the overthrow of Mosaddeq, the BBC continued to echo the official line that there had been no military coup but a spontaneous revolt against a “dictatorial regime.”
Even though the book details the close links between the government and the BBC during this crisis, it overlooks one major egregious case. Throughout the crisis, the Foreign Office and the British ambassador explicitly forbade the BBC to send to Tehran any reporters sympathetic to Iran.Footnote 1 Professor Elwell-Sutton was explicitly blacklisted despite his outstanding expertise. He had previously worked not only for the Foreign Office and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company but also for the BBC. The British embassy denounced him as “anti-colonial and anti-British.”Footnote 2 When it came to writing his classic work Persian Oil, he was too much of a gentleman to mention he had been a victim of government blacklisting.
The third case is far more complex even though many, led by the shah and the old elite, were convinced otherwise. Throughout the fourteen months of street protests, they bitterly complained that the BBC—at the behest of the British government—was not only giving too much coverage to the demonstrations but also providing them with favorable reporting. The shah complained bitterly that the BBC publicized forthcoming mass meetings and described “terrorists” as “guerrillas.” He went to his grave convinced the British had engineered his downfall—just as they had done his father’s—through the BBC. He complained so incessantly that the British ambassador expressed sympathy, and, at one point, the British government toyed with the idea of closing down the Persian Service. The Iranian information minister, Daryoush Homayoun, who served until August 1978, took to lecturing BBC reporters on how their main national duty was to improve relations between the two countries. The fact that the minister had a past in an Iranian pro-Nazi party, the Sumka, would not have gone unnoticed among the British reporters.
Despite suspicions and conspiratorial theories, the British government did not undermine the shah, did not encourage the BBC to do so, and did not succeed in influencing who was or was not sent to Iran as reporters. This book—as well as the Foreign Office archives—provide ample evidence to show that there was no British government desire to bring down the shah. The BBC merely did what any professional news organization is supposed to do: report events as they occurred. Although the book gives ample evidence for this conclusion, it tends to overlook an important generational factor: the reporters who covered the revolution for the BBC had come of age in the 1960s. They were not awed or mesmerized by the trappings of monarchy, by pomp and circumstance, by cold war hysteria, by automatic sympathy for stability and law and order, and by pompous calls for raison d'être—especially when they came from dubious sources. The more governments—whether Iranian or British—tried to pressure them one way the more they were likely to lean towards the opposite direction. They were not to be easily browbeaten. This generational factor should be taken into account when speculating about the future.
The fourth case the book examines are the contested 2009 presidential elections. Expecting the elections to be a smooth coronation, Ahmadinejad's administration suddenly opened up the country by providing entry visas to over a hundred foreign journalists. When the expected coronation turned into a highly contested election and over a million protestors took to the streets, the regime declared that the US and UK, helped by their NGOs, think tanks, and universities, had plotted a “velvet” or “soft revolution.” Not surprisingly, the BBC featured prominently in its long list of suspects. Ironically, the Islamic Republic resorted to language very similar to that used by the previous Pahlavi regime. In actual fact, the BBC had merely reported what was happening on the ground.
The regime may be paranoid, but this does not mean that the relationship between the BBC and the British government is not fraught with problematic issues. As the 1960s generation passes, reporters whose world view is similar to that of their own governments replace it. They share the same faith in the inherent virtues of globalization, open markets, small governments, free enterprise, privatization, and humanitarian intervention. What is more, their definition of human rights gives extra emphasis to individual and political rights but short shift to economic and social rights. The book implicitly admits this tendency when it introduces such terms as “cultural” and “public diplomacy” to describe the current mission of the BBC. One should not be surprised to find officials in Iran becoming more paranoid when they see the BBC drastically cutting its broadcasts to Eastern Europe and the rest of the world, but at the same time significantly increasing its budget for the Persian-speaking world—all for the sake of “public diplomacy.” Even paranoids can have real enemies.
