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JUNE 16, 2009 2:12PM

BBC online goes green for Iran

Rate: 4 Flag

By King Kaufman: The Iranian government jams the BBC's Farsi-language channel electronically and blocks its Farsi Web site.

Right now, the BBC's main home page is awash in green, evidently in support of the opposition "Green Revolution."

It's a remarkable show of support by a mainstream news organization for one side or the other in a political dispute. It also might be a Web version of the old saw about newspapers, supposedly uttered by Mark Twain: "Never pick a fight with a man who buys his ink by the barrel."

Author tags:

mark twain, king kaufman, future of journalism, journalism, web, bbc, iran, iran elections

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BBC is a "government owned enterprise", I love BBC, but.....?
Stellaa
June 16, 2009 02:25 PM
Not sure I get your point, Stellaa. The BBC is publicly owned, but it's not a government mouthpiece. It is, at least in theory, editorially independent.
King Kaufman
June 16, 2009 02:34 PM
Previous comment was by me.

king
King Kaufman
June 16, 2009 02:35 PM
There are some reports on Twitter that BBC changes its website color daily. I guess if they stay green tomorrow we can safely assume it was intentional. I personally like to think it was.
Kathy Riordan
June 16, 2009 03:32 PM
I wouldn't be at all suprised if it was intentional. The BBC has been trying to do its job, but has been shut down/had its signal jammed repeatedly (especially BBC Persia). At this point, now that the Iranian government has banned all reporting by foreign news organizations, I wouldn't blame them at all for feeling that a side had been "picked for them" by the government censorship.
Blake2
June 16, 2009 03:48 PM
Even if the BBC does change its color scheme every day, it would be pretty intentionally dense, or disingenuous, not to realize that turning the entire site green this week carries a definite message.

Whether they intended the message or not, and I can't believe they didn't, the message is the same.

king
King Kaufman
June 16, 2009 04:03 PM
I agree, noting the BBC website has now gone purple. Would love for it to have stayed a sea of green.
Kathy Riordan
June 16, 2009 04:23 PM
Erm, 'Green'? The BBC homepage changes colour daily whenever one loads the page, unless you have your page set to a specific colour. So it's currently purple.
Rene Moya
June 16, 2009 07:05 PM
Well, it's a simple point the Brits have interests. What is hard to understand about that?
Stellaa
June 16, 2009 11:06 PM