Fars (news agency)
Fars ( Persian خبرگزاری فارس; English Fars News Agency , FNA) is an Iranian news agency .
The agency brings news from politics, business, culture, society, law, sports, military and other areas. She maintains services in Persian , Turkish , Arabic and English. Fars is officially independent, but is considered to be under the influence of the Revolutionary Guard . A connection to the Revolutionary Guard is denied by Fars.
Fars was founded in early 2003. The English-speaking department, which has existed since December 2005, went into official operation on March 21, 2006 after a test phase. The official news agency Islamic Republic News Agency is much older .
According to former Fars employees, the influence of the Revolutionary Guard has grown since 2005 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office and many independent journalists were sacked. Iranian dissidents report that during interrogations they were subjected to in 2007, Fars staff were present and were said to have taken notes. In spring 2009 Fars founded the association “Tavana”, a journalistic training center for young members of the Basij-e Mostaz'afin . As the protests against the evaluation of the presidential elections of June 12, 2009 grew, Fars fired journalists who were not considered loyal to the line in July of 39 and replaced them with newly trained staff. In September 2009, two agency photographers fled to Turkey and applied for asylum there. Previously, contrary to instructions, they had taken pictures of opposition gatherings and sold them anonymously to foreign news agencies, which is why they were warned by the chief news editor and then fled Iran without their families.
In January 2020, the control authority of the US Treasury Department, OFAC, added the news agency to a sanctions list and had DNS name resolution blocked worldwide, so that the previously accustomed access was blocked. Access via IP addresses (178.22.78.1… 178.22.78.4) still exists.
Web links
- Homepage of Fars
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b About us ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Fars , English Language Service, 2006
- ↑ a b Farnaz Fassihi: Revolutionary Guards xtend Reach to Iran's media , Wall Street Journal , November 4th 2009
