Iranian television broadcasts barrage of misinformation to present Ronaldo as pro-Palestine
With eight textbook examples of misinformation in just two minutes, the Iranian public television channel IRIB broadcast a report on the football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo on June 15. The report made it seem like Ronaldo is a champion of the Palestinian cause, while expressing his “hatred” for Israel. But in reality, the story was rife with disinformation and crudely edited. Television programs in Iran are state-run, and most of them promote the ideology and policies of the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who personally appoints the heads of each channel. Many Iranians, aware of the propaganda broadcast on state TV, turn to Persian channels from abroad that are available via satellite. On June 15, it was one of these state-run TV channels, IRIB, broadcast a report in Persian about Cristiano Ronaldo and his supposed support for the Palestinian cause. In the two-minute report, we counted no less than eight falsehoods… which we’ll take a closer look at in this article. Playing against Iceland, not Israel First off, the report claims that the captain of the …