Speechification

When I was fourteen, my form teacher Mr Aldridge made us read The Times and the Morning Star every day. The intention was to teach us to be critical in our thinking and, while in no way trying to turn us into little Communists, realise that there were always two sides to any story.

In the same spirit, and with the infinitely greater opportunities that the Internet now presents for such an exercise, I present the daily news from the English-language service of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

From the regular, hour-long broadcast I’ve extracted twenty minutes of programme highlights and the news headlines (MP3 - apologies for occasional lapses - the feed is not good), but if you’d like to hear more, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s own Listen Again service can be found here (scroll down to the Live Radio option). The extract is worth listening to all the way through for the tunes at the end - among other things.

(One other story: I first heard the Voice of the Islamic Republic in the Horn of Africa, curled around a static-y shortwave radio. Presented by a young man and a young woman with bright, American-accented voices, it took me some time to work out its provenance. In most of the world, this voice, and many like it, have as loud a megaphone as the BBC.)