Reza Behrouz 

News of the return of the London-based Persian-language free-to-air television network Manoto has triggered jubilation amongst the Iranian people worldwide. The excitement is visible through short video clips of people inside Iran expressing exultation over the network’s imminent comeback on air. Manoto had ceased operations in January 2024 ostensibly due to financial constraints. 

Manoto was launched in October 2010 as an entertainment network, offering innovative shows with focus on Persian music and Iranian culture. It showcased talent competitions, culinary programs involving ordinary Iranians in the diaspora, and film series. There was also some political satire. Its popularity quickly and exponentially seized audiences and dominated over the existing Persian-language television networks, which many Iranians had come to suspect of morphing over time into the Islamic Republic regime’s propaganda platforms. To the ordinary Iranian, Manoto represented the closest a network resembled the pre-revolutionary Iranian television (Radio Televizion-e-Melli-e-Iran). Manoto was also the first west-based Persian-language network to experiment with the concept of citizen journalism, circumventing the Islamic Republic regime’s censorship and simultaneously as a way of improvisation for lacking correspondents in the field and inside Iran. 

In time, Manoto began offering a series of well-scripted and impeccably produced documentaries, primarily focusing on Iran and the Iranian people’s lives prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. With access to a vast archive of historical footage from pre-1979 Iran, Manoto sought to publish the available footage in form of documentaries showcasing prominent political and governmental figures of the Pahlavi Dynasty, including Reza Shah Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveida, and Parviz Sabeti, the former head of SAVAK. These anthology series of pre-revolutionary Iranian sociopolitical atmosphere had a remarkable impact on the Iranian society inside and outside the country. For the first time in nearly four decades, Iranians of post-revolutionary generation were exposed to an unfiltered chronicle of what Iran had once been and how the Islamic Republic regime had come to exist. It was also a memento of sorts for Iranians who had lived in both eras, before and after the rise of the Khomeinist regime. Manoto was the first network to introduce Iranians to the “other side of the story” and an alternative to the propaganda promulgated for over four decades by the regime and the reactionary generation of the 1970s.

Conversely, many in the diaspora who were predominantly in the reformist, hard-leftist and the Mujahedin-e-Khalq camps, saw the network as a propaganda rostrum for the neo-royalist movement, which was rapidly gaining momentum amongst Iranians, especially the youth. Mantoto’s documentary programs were certainly a threat to their lopsided narrative. Attacks against the network subsequently began on mainstream western media and social engagement platforms. Even after Mantoto went off air in early 2024, the attacks against the network and its staff continued on social media. 

After a series of widespread unrests in Iran and particularly in the wake of the 2022 national uprising, Mantoto adopted a more political tone, and placed increasingly more emphasis on news from inside Iran, pivoting on citizen journalism. The network and its staff became vocally and unapologetically anti-regime. It also took on a more nationalistic temperament by concentrating on patriotic movements inside and outside Iran and by furnishing discussion platforms to pundits who subscribed to nationalist values. This new posture further angered Manoto’s detractors and competitors, to the extent that once the network announced its cessation, expressions of rapture emanated from groups and individuals with distinct political persuasions. 

While Manoto ceased its operations on air, it continued its activities on social media, taking advantage of an audience consisting of millions of followers on various platforms. The network’s off-air hiatus inadvertently coincided with an era in which the world moved away from traditional mainstream media and, owing to the efforts of Elon Musk, turned to social media and citizen journalism to keep updated with world events. That is how Manoto managed to remain relevant despite losing its satellite broadcasting.

The emergence of Manoto and its comeback are important in Iran’s sociopolitical history. Manoto was innovative in production and sagacious in attracting a staunch audience. As Manoto senior producer and chief news editor Tina Ghazimorad said in an interview, the network from the very outset strived to be a mirror in which the Iranian people found and visualized themselves. Whether its programs centered on culture, history or politics, Manoto did exactly that. It moved beyond cliché rhetoric and tried assiduously to deliver. While other Persian-language networks enforced their ulterior agenda on the pretense of “every individual should have a voice,” Manoto’s genuine motivation was that Iran as a nation should have a cumulative and synergistic, not antagonistic voice. 

The testament to all this is Manoto’s heavy reliance on citizen journalism, frequently publishing short clips by ordinary Iranian people not only reporting on social and political issues inside the country, but also expressing their dreams and aspirations. This mode of synthesis was such that individual voices became complementary, not mutually exclusive. In so doing, Manoto did not shy away from making its stance and purpose clear and did not hide behind the guise of impartiality. Perhaps the Iranian people found this feature attractive and perceived it as an indication of honesty. 

As the network re-evaluated its priorities based on what was important to its staff and editors and what it apparently perceived as the sentiment of the Iranian people, it took considerable risk of focusing on the greater good of the nation at the cost of its collapse. Manoto’s return is not merely a desire of the Iranian people for a network with patriotic tendencies, but rather indicative of an unfinished mission. There are still stories to be told, conversations to be held, tears to be shed and laughter to let out. Manoto goes on air once again with the understanding that Iranian individuality is more than a collection of trees. It is an entire forest; a panorama that only Manoto is capable of putting on view.