Trapped In A Digital Cage: Western News Outlets Let Iranians Down
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(OPINION) Iranians are trapped in a digital iron cage as the state continues to deprive citizens of internet access, largely thanks to Chinese and Russian technology.
When the war broke out on Feb. 28, Iran’s digital isolation intensified, leaving millions disconnected from the global internet and unable to communicate freely with the outside world.
As Iranians are silenced and disconnected, the external media environment — from foreign‑funded Persian‑language outlets such as BBC Persian, Voice of America Persian, and Iran International to major international media — becomes not only a lifeline that covers diverse issues, including human rights, protests, and the war, but also a highly contested arena of narrative control.
Almost all these media outlets are financed directly and indirectly by foreign money, from liberal democracies — such as the U.S., the U.K. and Germany, which financed, among others, Voice of America, Radio Farda, BBC and Deutsche Welle — to the authoritarian Saudi State which allegedly funds a London-based news outlet.
Several voices from within the media and the public have criticized shattered standards of media ethics, especially claims to objectivity. In a country where internal journalism is heavily restricted, and journalists and cyber activists repressed and jailed, these external outlets play an outsized role in shaping how both Iranians and the world understand Iran. Their reporting has frequently been criticized for being filtered through political, institutional and financial agendas.
Iran, a Shi’a majority nation, has repressed journalists and cyber‑activists for decades, while many of them have defied the regime and shed light on the darkness by reporting and investigating. According to Reporters Without Borders, Iran ranks 176th out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom, making it one of the most repressive environments for “freedom of the press.”
Iran’s media landscape is best understood as a “digital iron cage,” in which the Iranian population remains voiceless. The Iranian people’s voices and stories are sometimes distorted in Western media, impacting public opinion of both Iranians and Westerners.
Echoing the regime’s narrative
Critics argue that some of these outlets exhibit bias, double standards, or even political agendas. For example, BBC Persian has long been criticized by sections of the Iranian diaspora — sometimes labeled “Ayatollah BBC” — for perceived sympathy towards the Islamic Republic or for a tone that appears detached from the fury of protesters.
Sadeq Saba, former head of BBC Persian, stated in a recent interview with The Times that the service’s reputation has been “shattered” during the war because of its “failure to reflect the mood of many ordinary citizens.”
Saba claims that BBC Persian has lost credibility with swathes of its audience who see international military action as potentially enabling the overthrow of the regime.
“When you go to anti‑regime demonstrations in London, people are saying: ‘Death to Ayatollah BBC.’ A lot of people now hate BBC Persian,” Saba said. “Its reputation has been shattered.”
Yet the label “Ayatollah BBC” emerged long before the war broke out. A particularly shocking example for many was the choice by BBC Persian of Farrokh Negahdar — a leftist activist and frequent contributor to the channel — on Jan. 3, just five days before the massacre of tens of thousands of Iranians, when he echoed a claim that downplayed regime violence: “Based on your report, ten people were killed... It means they did not give the order to shoot. They die in stampedes. They are killed in personal conflicts.”
The journalist did not challenge this frequent BBC Persian guest, or even ask where he had obtained this information. No simple question was posed, let alone a rigorous challenge. In this way, BBC Persian lent legitimacy to a narrative that echoed the regime’s efforts to deflect responsibility for lethal crackdowns.
Recruiting a platform for the opposition
Iran International, a multi-language news website based in London and allegedly funded by Saudi Arabia, appears to have increasingly functioned as a de facto platform for certain strands of opposition politics, at times adopting a more confrontational tone.
This dynamic became particularly visible in a video message by political activist and former Crown Prince of his Iran’s Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Pahlavi, in June last year. He stated: “Only those forces whose hands are not stained with the blood of the people are being addressed.”
He further noted that the television announcement related to this communication channel was being broadcast exclusively through Iran International, and urged viewers, for their own safety, to use only the QR code displayed during the live broadcast. He also warned against scanning any other QR codes — especially those circulating on social media — emphasizing that the only valid code was the one shown on Iran International.
When a media outlet publicly assumes such a role, it becomes difficult to view it as fully objective. Similar concerns emerged during the 2022–2023 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, when several media outlets struggled to maintain distance from opposition movements.
As Amir Mosadegh Katouzian, a broadcast journalist and former co-director of the Persian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Radio Farda), noted in a roundtable discussion for Global Voices, not all outlets should be treated equally. However, he argued that some have engaged in what he described as “propaganda-like activities.”
He pointed out that one outlet repeatedly relied on an obscure Telegram page called “Javanan-e Mahallat-e Tehran” (“Tehran Neighborhoods’ Youth”) as a credible source, amplifying its calls for protest and mobilization without sufficient verification.
During 2022, statements attributed to similarly named groups across different cities were circulated by certain media outlets without fact-checking. These groups soon disappeared, and no clarification was provided. Some observers have even suggested that these entities may have been constructed or exaggerated through media amplification.
More broadly, with only rare exceptions, these outlets tend to avoid critical discussions of opposition shortcomings, including issues of transparency and internal accountability.
Several journalists in recent months have either been dismissed or resigned from media outlets due to political disagreements. Ahmad Batebi, a prominent Iranian dissident, human rights activist, and American journalist, stated that he was given no explanation for the termination of his contract at Voice of America but attributed it to efforts to limit coverage of Pahlavi.
Western media and normalization of repression
Unfortunately, for a long time, major Western news outlets — including institutional broadcasters, think-tanks, and “neutral‑style” platforms — have paved the way for the Islamic Republic’s discourse to be implanted and normalized, rather than critically challenged. Iranian officials and so‑called “independent” academics have often found media and think‑tank doors conspicuously wide open for just this kind of legitimization.
For example, the Iranian‑French academic Fariba Adelkhah, in a widely circulated France 24 video published years before the 2022–2023 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, denied that the hijab was compulsory in Iran, even as Iranian women faced structural and physical violence for failing to conform to state‑imposed religious dress codes.
Not only are Iranian women criminalized for non‑compliance with compulsory hijab, but the 2022–2023 uprising itself began when Mahsa (Jina) Amini was detained and died in state custody over alleged violations of the mandatory dress code. In September 2022, police tasked with enforcing “public morals” in Tehran arrested Amini for allegedly failing to wear “proper” hijab, an event that ignited nationwide protests demanding an end to compulsory veiling and state‑sanctioned repression.
Iranian officials have long enjoyed relatively easy access to prestigious Western media and think-tanks, where their statements can be framed as “reformist” or “moderate”, even as they preside over brutal repression at home. For instance, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in an interview with TV personality Charlie Rose in April 2015, claimed that “we do not jail people for their opinions.”
Yet, at the same time, religious minorities and secular or political dissidents were routinely imprisoned, tortured or driven into exile for expressing their beliefs. Such performances of “whitewashing” the regime’s policies in Western media help normalize the regime’s discourse, obscuring the reality of systematic repression.
‘Axis of Evasion’
The Iranian state aims to impose its soft power abroad through propaganda, while at home it constructs a digital iron cage for Iranians — a project carried out in close partnership with Russia and China.
Iran’s internet‑control architecture is built on technologies imported from or inspired by Chinese digital‑surveillance ecosystems. An Article 19 report from earlier this year, “Tightening the Net: China’s infrastructure of oppression in Iran,” shows that the regime has relied on Chinese hardware and governance models — copying elements of China’s “cyber sovereignty” framework and National Information Network‑style architecture.
At the same time, the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center has described what it calls the “Axis of Evasion” — a network of China, Russia and Iran that uses integrated supply chains, shadow‑fleet oil trade, alternative payment systems, and barter to bypass Western sanctions and import dual‑use surveillance technology. China, in particular, fuels this axis by importing Iranian oil and supplying sophisticated surveillance tools that circumvent export controls.
In this way, the Islamic Republic projects a carefully curated narrative abroad while confining Iranians to a tightly policed digital environment at home. Even as some media outlets echo the Orwellian world of “Animal Farm” — where the boundary between “revolutionaries” and “power holders” blurs — Iranians inside the country continue to resist, organizing and enduring sacrifice for freedom and justice amid bullets and bombs.
Fred Petrossian is a European-based Iranian journalist, blogger and researcher.