Propaganda

Watching news on TV in Iran one has to constantly interpret every word or directly reverse the editorial pint of view to get the actual news.

All TV and Radio in Iran is directly controlled by the government. There are many American and European movies dubbed in Farsi and shown on TV. But when it comes to actual news, it is pretty much all propaganda.

There is one channel called Khabar, which means news and has news shows in Arabic, English and Farsi.

From time to time, I catch the English edition anchored by various men and women with American or British accents. You get a feel of watching SkyNews or CNN in London. The only difference is the content and the way they look.

Women are of course in full Hejab, Islamic covering showing only the face, and men never wear a tie and sometimes are unshaven.

Yesterday there was a news piece about Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Of course they call Israel the Zionist Regime. The anchor reading the news was trying so hard to make the news one sided. He actually said, “pellet throwing Palestinian youth…” to even lessen the size of the rocks being tossed.

In another piece about the desecration of Quran, the Islam’s Holy book, in GITMO, they showed a different American prison. It was not Cuba and the prisoners were not suspected Muslim terrorists!

It was the video was of a black man being executed by lethal ejection. I guess they wanted to show something gruesome in America. I must say that the video looked very dated too.

There is no real attention to truth either. The uglier the better.

News about Iraq always starts with “the American occupiers…” and if there is a video, I am sure I have already seen it many time last week!

Don't get me wrong, Americans are occupying Iraq and we all feel for the Palestinian struggle, but the news has to be reported as seen, not as what they want you to see.

Ramin Talaie – Tehran, Iran – June 8, 2005