JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile

CONTEXT

IRANIAN MEDIA IN EXILE: HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND DEVELOPMENTS

The Iranian exiled media landscape has no single point of origin, but developed through successive periods of political repression, state control and displacement that predate the Islamic Republic. Under the authoritarian Pahlavi monarchy broadcasting was brought under a state monopoly and became both an extension of hegemonic power and a tool of regime security, including close cooperation with the security service SAVAK. The Islamic Republic kept this same logic, using the media as an instrument of state authority under a different ideology, and relying on the same tools of licensing, censorship, and prosecution that earlier regimes had used. For journalists unwilling to work within these constraints, exile did not begin with the repression that followed the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the crackdown after the disputed 2009 election, the 2022–2023 ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests, or the renewed waves of repression, wartime censorship and prolonged internet shutdowns in 2025 and 2026. These successive periods show that media exile in Iran is rooted in a much longer history. This “historicity,” as one interviewed expert put it, is essential to understanding the shape of today’s Iranian exile media landscape [1].

[1] This profile draws on two rounds of interviews. In 2023, an earlier mapping study interviewed 20 media makers (5 journalists, 7 outlet representatives, 8 influencers/citizen journalists/media personalities). For this 2026 Country Profile, JX Fund and The FiX conducted 8 further interviews with representatives of Iranian exile media outlets.

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“When a crisis happens, ordinary people become incredible journalists.”

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, founder of Tehran Bureau

FIGURES & TRENDS

MEDIA PROFILES

Iranian independent media in exile cover national and regional news in roughly equal measure. Of the 16 exiled independent media, 8 primarily focus on national issues and 8 on regional topics, a more balanced split than is typically seen in comparable exile media ecosystems.

The history of these outlets stretches back further than most. While the largest single-year spike came in 2017, when four new outlets launched, the ecosystem has roots going back to 1999, shaped by decades of political repression rather than a single triggering event. Two outlets launched as recently as 2025, suggesting the space continues to grow.

Persian is the primary language across all 16 outlets. Ten also publish in English, thus, staying relevant for international communities while remaining accessible to international audiences. Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish, and Balochi editions also appear, pointing to the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the communities these outlets serve and, in many cases, advocate for.

Thematically, news and legal/human rights coverage are the twin pillars of Iranian exile journalism. Thirteen outlets cover general news; 12 focus on legal affairs and human rights. Economy and politics follow at 9 outlets each. What stands out is the cluster around prison and execution coverage and women’s rights, each labeled across 7 outlets. These topics reflect the specific conditions that drove many of these journalists into exile in the first place.

FIGURES & TRENDS

REACH & DISTRIBUTION

Instagram is the largest platform for Iranian exile media by audience size. The 14 outlets active on it have accumulated 22.2 million followers combined, dwarfing every other channel by a wide margin.² This reflects something specific about Iranian digital culture: Instagram has long functioned as a primary space for news, commentary, and civic conversation, both inside the country and across the diaspora.

Twitter (X) is the most broadly adopted platform, with 15 of 16 outlets maintaining an account. Websites and Facebook follow at 88% each. Website traffic figures deserve careful interpretation. Iranian audiences face heavy internet restrictions and depend on VPNs and circumvention tools to access content, which means standard analytics undercount real readership significantly. The 2.41 million cumulative website followers on record should be read as a floor, not a ceiling.

Telegram deserves particular attention. Although formally banned in Iran since 2018, it remains one of the most widely used applications in the country, with tens of millions of active users sustained almost entirely through VPNs and circumvention tools. Twelve of the 16 assessed outlets run a Telegram channel, accumulating 1.5 million followers collectively. That number almost certainly understates true reach, given how difficult it is to track audiences operating behind circumvention infrastructure. For outlets covering sensitive topics like executions, political prisoners, and women’s rights, Telegram channels have become an essential distribution layer, functioning less like social media and more like a direct newswire to engaged readers inside Iran.

TikTok is a near-absence. Only 2 outlets are on the platform, compared to 56% adoption among Russian exile media. This gap likely reflects both the resource limitations of smaller outlets and a more cautious approach to audience development among Iranian journalists in exile.

FIGURES & TRENDS

COMMUNITY

Iranian exile media reflect the country’s own political and linguistic diversity, but these are represented very unevenly. Monarchist-aligned media occupy a particularly visible and well-resourced position in the high-reach Persian-language broadcast space, while republican, left-of-centre, left-wing, federalist and other political perspectives have considerably less institutional presence and audience reach. The imbalance is even more pronounced for Kurdish, Azerbaijani and Balochi media, which generally operate with far fewer resources than the major Persian-language broadcasters. Non-Persian outlets continue to describe exclusion from Persian-language mainstream networks, where they are sometimes labelled separatist regardless of their actual editorial positions.

Cooperation also takes place informally across political and linguistic divides. Journalists and outlets with different political orientations, including social-democratic actors, are connected through professional networks. Non-Persian media also describe regular information-sharing across communities; Azerbaijani and Balochi broadcasters, for example, report routinely sharing footage and reporting with one another. ASL19’s Iran Cyber Dialogue has provided a recurring space for exchange across the sector. Previous sector mapping discussed the creation of a European-level journalists’ association that could provide collective legal support, access to training and stronger professional opportunities for journalists who remain underrepresented in larger outlets. International organizations such as CPJ, RSF, and IFJ provide legal support and advocacy for individual journalists, but do not represent the sector as a whole. These networks also shape how reporting is produced. Many exile outlets rely on citizen-sourced content — videos, images and information passed through informal networks, then verified and republished from abroad.

Iran Cyber Dialogue — an annual conference organized by ASL19 bringing together diaspora communities, exiled media, and digital rights organizations working on censorship and information access; currently transitioning into a broader global program.
ASL19 — Canadian digital rights organization focused on internet freedom and information access in Iran; runs the Factnameh fact-checking platform and develops technology for civil society and exiled media.

EXPERT COMMENT

PERSPECTIVES & PREDICTIONS

Iranian exile media do not lack diversity of perspectives. The harder questions concern whose reporting reaches audiences, who has the resources to sustain this work, and which sources people regard as credible. The answers to these questions do not always overlap.

Manoto and Iran International both have substantial audiences, though several journalists interviewed for this mapping raised concerns about their editorial independence. Manoto was described as openly monarchist, with interviewees critical of what they saw as an idealised portrayal of the Pahlavi era. For Iran International, concerns centred on the prominence given to Reza Pahlavi and his supporters, as well as its coverage of the 2026 US-Israeli military operations, criticised by interviewees as lacking critical distance.

By comparison, interviewees regarded outlets such as Iran Journal, IranWire, Tehran Bureau and Zamaneh as more impartial, though these outlets generally operate with smaller teams, more limited resources, and smaller audiences.

Alongside this rather small number of established outlets, smaller operations have developed around individual journalists and their audiences. Pulse Media, founded by Sima Sabet and Saman Rasoulpour, is built around its founders’ journalistic profiles. Their program offers impartial coverage of events and protests inside Iran, alongside interviews with political experts and analysts. Vahid Online offers another model: a Telegram operation with almost 1.5 million followers, known for the consistency and reliability of its reporting and for its publicly visible forms of direct audience support, including listed Patreon and PayPal links.

Scale and organizational form, however, are only part of the picture. Access to trusted networks inside Iran can be just as important. Zan Zendegi Azadi TV is one example: a donation-funded, self-taught effort with no institutional backing, yet closely tied to civil society networks inside the country. One of its co-founders described how the administration of union-affiliated Telegram channels had been transferred to him by a member of the Iranian teachers’ union movement who had left the country. The channels served a dual function: material shared through them could inform the outlet’s editorial coverage from exile, while they also remained a means of information-sharing and coordination for the teachers’ movement inside Iran. Here, journalistic reporting, civil society organizing and community-based information networks overlap. The actors involved do not necessarily operate as conventional media organizations, yet they perform many of the public-information functions associated with independent journalism.

This is particularly relevant for non-Persian media, where limited resources and questions of political affiliation often intersect. Kurdish-, Balochi- and Azerbaijani outlets are mentioned particularly often and are frequently perceived as political actors rather than independent news organizations. In relatively small media and civil society communities, the same individuals may move between journalism, political activism and human rights advocacy. Drawing a strict line between these roles can therefore impose an artificial distinction on the community. Kurdpa (Kurdistan Press Agency), for example, combines news reporting with systematic documentation of arrests, executions and other human rights violations in Iran’s Kurdish regions, illustrating how journalism and human rights monitoring can overlap in media serving marginalized communities.

The consequences are also visible in access to distribution infrastructure. According to Shoresh Mohi, a MiCT Fellow writing for Zamaneh and Kurdane, satellite distribution is one of the clearest examples of how funding and political affiliation intersect. Satellite is among the channels least affected by internet shutdowns, though it carries risks and limitations of its own. Much of the existing Kurdish-language satellite capacity, however, is tied to political parties. Other channels and circumvention tools can also help smaller independent outlets stay accessible, especially to digitally skilled users. Reaching people with fewer technical options is harder. Limited funding makes that harder still. Independent Persian- and non-Persian-language outlets may produce credible reporting and maintain strong networks inside Iran, but lack the resources to sustain the distribution channels and trusted relationships that keep information moving across borders and beyond already connected audiences. For smaller outlets, resilient distribution, censorship circumvention and community networks are closely linked. Strengthening this ecosystem matters because plurality depends on whether different voices can actually reach audiences.

1 These figures include diaspora audiences outside Iran, and are subject to the platform-wide caveats of bot accounts and audience overlap across outlets.

2 This reflects how these practitioners perceived their audiences, not audience-side data on actual consumption behavior.

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