Several times in recent months various people asked me why I agree to be interviewed from time to time on the Iranian English-language station Press TV. They suggested it was improper to cooperate in any way with an official organ of a repressive regime of which I have openly and vehemently disapproved for many years. My response was always that it is my general policy to speak to any news outlet whatsoever as long as the interview is live, unedited and I am completely free to speak my mind. Until now, that has largely been the case with Press TV. No longer.

Yesterday morning at about 6:30 AM Washington time I rolled groggily out of bed to appear (somewhat disheveled) on Skype on a Press TV program dealing with a potential Palestinian UN initiative during the upcoming UN general assembly meeting. The interview itself was fairly straightforward, and I repeated my well-established analysis that full UN membership is not available to the Palestinians because the United States has made it clear it would veto any such initiative, and that less ambitious initiatives in the general assembly also might carry significant risks for the Palestinians. I argued, as I have been for a long time, that the best solution would be a compromise that avoids a confrontation that is not in the interest of any party.

In other words, I repeated my standard analysis. The interview itself was fine. However, the Press TV website posted the video of the interview with the following outrageous headline: “US main obstacle to peace in Palestine.” The quotation marks strongly imply that this is something I said, or implied. Obviously I neither said nor implied anything of the kind, because it is a ridiculous, and indeed offensive, position. In addition to that, the transcript ends incorrectly with me supposedly saying “The problem is that in the end nobody else wants to be a broker. It is not just that the United States is hoarding the process; it is that there are any other candidates…” What I actually said was that “The problem is that in the end nobody else wants to be a broker. It is not just that the United States is hoarding the process; it is that there AREN'T any other candidates, no one else is volunteering to do it.”

So not only does the headline attribute to me a sentiment which I absolutely do not agree with and did not either say or imply, and which I find completely ridiculous, the transcript has me suggesting that there are other candidates to broker the process when in fact what I was saying is that there are no other candidates volunteering to broker the process. All of this is clearly reflected in the video, thankfully.

But I find this entire experience not only unprofessional but unethical. I believe my attitudes have been deliberately misrepresented and my words misconstrued, and this is simply not acceptable. The point of this blog posting is first of all to clarify the record and make sure everybody understands that I never said or implied anything remotely resembling the idea that the “US [is the] main obstacle to peace in Palestine.” Second, it is to explain that I will not be appearing on Press TV in the future and why. So much for that.