Covering Iran's Vote in the Shadow of Death Threats

Many things about Iran's June 13 presidential election now seem extraordinary to us: the moderate winner, his first round victory, the cleanness of the vote. But as as journalist, one of the things that particularly struck me was that for the first time in modern history, Iranians had access to world-class television news coverage of a momentous election. BBC Persian television, the favoured news channel of millions of Iranians, offered round the clock news updates, panels, and varied, sharp analysis, all of a professional caliber that could have easily matched the best television produced anywhere in the world. It must have been all the more riveting inside Iran, as the authorities refrained from scrambling the network's signal, allowing Iranians to watch a channel whose influence they usually fear and attempt to block.

But as BBC Persian journalists scrambled to cover the vote so intelligently, inside the newsroom there was talk of death threats and intimidation: two dozen staff had been targeted by Iranian authorities in the lead-up to the election, their family members in Tehran summoned for interrogation and bullying. An official BBC statement condemned “this completely unacceptable harassment” and the “crude attempts to discredit our journalism.” Many Persian service journalists described a chilling campaign of intimidation that reflects a darker side of Iran's election, one that doesn't figure into the emerging narrative of this vote as a signal of the country's eagerness to moderate and re-engage with the world.

The overwhelming objective of the harassment, journalists said, was to force BBC staff to “cooperate” with whichever authorities were behind the campaign (Iran's parallel security agencies often work at cross purposes, and no one is certain whether it was the Ministry of Intelligence itself or the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guards at work). “They wanted people to start informing on their colleagues, to begin meeting up with them in Turkey to relay information,” said one staff member with close knowledge of the interrogations.

The harassment itself, many said, was more explicitly aggressive than in the past, and targeted senior editorial staff as well as popular and visible presenters. This broadening of staff targets, one journalist suggested, reflected the Iranian authorities deepening knowledge of BBC Persian's internal operations and staffing. In recent months a staffer suspected of collaborating with Iranian authorities left the network and returned to Tehran, and it is speculated that this individual has relayed information enabling this wider campaign of harassment.

While much of the interrogations sought new staff informants within the network, in several case they included death threats. One journalist's parent was told in Tehran: “Don't think your child is safe just because she's in London.  An accident can be arranged very easily.” The interrogators, according to various accounts, singled out relatives and parents of journalists who were particularly vulnerable, those who were in ailing health or financially dependent on state pensions. During one interrogating, authorities threatened to cut off one parent's pension if he refused to convince his adult son to stop working for BBC Persian.  The authorities phoned one parent who was seriously ill. “There are no depths below this,” said one journalist in the newsroom that election evening. “To go after us is one thing, but to target the families goes beyond anything.”

Some Persian service journalists said they felt the BBC had sought to downplay news of what its staff had been facing, but some were also reluctant to draw attention to their experience themselves. “Its tough, on one hand we want people to know this is going on,” said one presenter, whose parents have been extensively interrogated by Iranian authorities in the past. “But if we talk about it too much, they will think we're intimidated. We're not, and we don't want to give them that impression.”

Harassment itself is nothing new for BBC Persian staff, who have for years personally undergone interrogation in Iran on trips home, according to several journalists. But much has changed in just the past four years, in the aftermath of the 2009 crackdown and the closure of Britain's embassy in Tehran. In the past, some journalists and staff say, the Iranian authorities had multiple avenues to both complain about the network's perceived journalistic bias and gather intelligence about internal operations. Iran's Foreign Ministry, they say, routinely shared their displeasure through the embassy to the UK Foreign Office, resulting in high-level meetings where senior BBC management expressed concern and resulted in BBC Persian's senior management chastising journalists for their coverage of the 2009 uprising. At roughly the same time, most staff ceased travel to Iran out of security concerns, thus also depriving authorities of intelligence they gleaned from interrogations during those visits. “What used to be pressure conveyed through diplomatic channels is now directly applied to us, through our families,” said one staffer.

Whether the Iranian authorities continue to bully journalists from afar remains to be seen. But what's clear is that their nervousness reflects BBC Persian's growing influence within Iran's educated and political classes. One of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ministers said publicly that the cabinet often switched on BBC Persian during meetings and a senior religious figure in Qom recently told a BBC official that young clerics often rehash debates from the network's flagship show 60 Minutes in seminary classes. “They see that our coverage played a role in bringing all the fence-sitters out to vote in this election,” a journalist said. “And in their view, this influence is a threat.”