Thursday Dec. 1, 2005
gooya news online reporting from Radio Farda:

Minister of guidance thinking to control the media or........
Mr. Mohammad hosain Safar Harandi the minister of culture and islamic gidance in a letter to cabinet ministers , demanded from them that; from now on all their government advertisement to the media must go through the ministry of gidance.
According to the reporter from Radio Farda , in this letter which was sent to the ministry of petrolume, ministry of agriculture , ministry of energy &mining industry state that ;by virtue of section 5 of article 2 of the law , the goal and mission of the ministry of guidance ratified on March 1986 , control, distribution and publication of all kind of government advertisement and its execution inside and outside the country is the duty of this ministry.
The minister of guidance demanded from the ministers to give order to their units to follow the
law and stop sending their government advertisement directly to the media.
................According to the reporter some of these ministries even cancelled their agreed future media advertisement with newspapers.......... A media expert believe that the minister is trying to control finances of the newspapers.....most specially the newspapers that are critical to the government........So by this law the pulse of the media will be in the hand of ministery of guidance.... and the ministry by sending the ads to desirable newspapers will bring fiancial difficulties to newspapers that are critical to government........but also in the past the ministries were sending their ads to newspapers inorder to stop their journalists running after their corrupt ministries................

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Translated by IRAN WATCH CANADA
Link to this news in Farsi:
http://raha.gooya.name/politics/archives/040249.php