The Shameful Silence: Iran, Revolution, and the American Media

Media, Television — By Lindsay Stallones on June 14, 2009 at 6:30 pm

Saturday was a critical day in the history of Iran.  For over a decade, the younger population in Iran (the country with the most people under 30 per capita) has been growing increasingly disillusioned with the ironclad principles of the Islamic Revolution.  There have been moments in its recent political history, such as the presidency of reformist Seyed Mohammad Khatami, when it seemed the youth of Iran would part ways with the draconian leadership of the past.  Given the nominally democratic structure of the Iranian government, it was even possible that such reform efforts could blossom into a new era of liberal democracy in the country.

In fact, until the election, hopes were high that this could be one such moment.

Khatami, hero of the young reformers, announced his bid for the presidency in February.  In March, partly due to opposition from authorities and partly due to his belief that long-time friend and fellow reformist Mir-Houssein Mousavi stood a better chance of unseating Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, he stepped aside.

For a few weeks, it seemed Khatami made the winning move.  Mousavi trounced Ahmadenijad in the country’s first televised presidential debates.  The youth of Iran flocked to him, especially young voters in urban areas who thirst for change.  The streets were full of green-clad supporters, all rallying for Mousavi.  For a moment, I hoped that it could happen.

Then came yesterday’s “official” tally: Ahmadenijad won by 63% to Mousavi’s 34%.  Those in power didn’t even see fit to allow a run-off (as Iran’s system dictates when neither candidate takes more than a 50% majority in the first round).  It’s a blatant, arrogant attempt by Ahmadenijad and his fellow conservatives to maintain power.  It’s painfully obvious to the world… and to Mousavi’s supporters.  Only the next few days will tell if this could be the spark to ignite real change in Iran by the will of the people, or if this could, God forbid, turn into another Tiananmen Square.  Last night in Iran, Mousavi’s supporters burned tires and buildings, fought off riot police, and screamed for the world’s attention to call their masters to task.

What was the news media of the most powerful liberal democracy in the world doing at the time?

Fox News carried Mike Huckabee’s talk show.  His guests discussed Obama’s spending plan, and a few of them rapped badly (in form and substance) about current events.  CNN carried Campbell Brown’s talk show.  She hosted a debate on releasing Guantanamo Bay prisoners into the US and a round table discussion of whether Obama was effective, or merely popular.  MSNBC featured a documentary about human behavior that chronicled (but failed to analyze) the mass sexual assault committed during the Puerto Rican Parade in New York City in 2000, as well as a curious case of female convenience store robbers in Texas.  Headline News continued their gripping expose of the dangers of eating fast food.

The networks’ websites didn’t fare much better.  The two major news websites that carried the most detailed coverage of the Iranian elections were, of course, the BBC and, shockingly, the Huffington Post.

We no longer have a 24 hour news cycle.  We have 24 hour news programming.  Not one network broke into their prerecorded celebrity-hosted shows to report the alleged arrest of Mousavi and a number of other reformers.  Even their ever-present news tickers barely mentioned the controversy, only reporting the “official” results and vaguely mentioning unrest or protest.

Meanwhile, Iranians twittered the news.  Other sources verified the reports.  None of them, it seems, works for the self-proclaimed most reliable and immediate sources of news.  CNN even had the gall to run an ad for itself during Brown’s show, claiming to be the most immediate, relevant, reliable source of news.

We are in trouble.  If we don’t actively seek the news, it seems, we may find ourselves being amused to death, debating the importance of fans naming a poodle after Mike Huckabee or the spat between Sarah Palin and David Letterman, while fellow human beings who seek the freedoms these networks claim to promote are beaten in the streets for demanding that their votes be counted.  The question has long ceased to be “who’s watching the watchers?”  Now the question is “Who’s watching at all?” ‘



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  • smmtheory

    Isn’t it a bit early to be calling what is going on in Iran a revolution?

  • http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com Matthew Lee Anderson

    Smmtheory,

    Probably. The title was mine, not Lindsay’s, so I take responsibility for it. Sometimes I let my titling run away from me…

    Highest regards,

    matt

  • Tim

    Oh, I thought ‘revolution’ referred to the “Islamic Revolution” mentioned in the first paragraph. The other way makes more sense though.

  • http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com Matthew Lee Anderson

    Tim, thanks for the proof that I should get out of the titling business. I’ll pass that work along to someone else, now!

    matt

  • ex-preacher

    Does anyone seriously expect to encounter news on the Mike Huckabee show? Most of the “news” channels are actually opinion/commentary infotainment channels. Maybe you need to look to other sources. Several of the news sources I rely on, such as the New York Times and NPR, have been covering the events in Iran very closely and with helpful insight.

    On a separate note, what is your source for Iran being “the country with the most people under 30 per capita”? According to the nationmaster website, the median age in Iran is 26.4, meaning half of Iranians are older than that and half are younger. That’s a pretty young median age compared to Western countries, but 104 countries have even lower median ages (the lowest is Uganda with a median age of 15). Iran does have an unusually large proportion of 18-29 year olds. Perhaps you meant that Iran has the highest proportion of VOTERS under age 30.

  • http://evangelicaloutpost.com/?fbconnect_action=myhome&userid=59 Lindsay Stallones

    ex-preacher,

    Sorry – I was working from outdated statistics. It’s no longer #1, but it does have an abnormally large number of voters under 30.

    And no, I don’t expect to get any news from Huckabee. What I do expect is that a station like Fox News (or CNN or MSNBC) that claims to be hard-hitting, immediate, and accurate will be at least one of those things. And I agree that NPR and the New York Times have been on it (though neither responded online that evening to the reports of arrests on Saturday, either).

    But alarmingly, the major cable news networks command large audiences, and as a culture, we tend to expect someone to hand us the news, pre-analyzed, like a mother bird regurgitating worms for her chicks. That should change, so I thought an article was important.

  • Alex

    I’d be more interested in the riots if both candidates weren’t selected by the religious leadership. If the riots were meant to overthrow the Ayatollah’s it would be interesting.

    At this point its just a bunch of people dying for their puppet candidate. If they were really interested in democracy they would being protesting the real leadership in that country. Maybe the news networks didn’t report on it right away because the events were predictable. Aren’t Middle East elections and human rights violations synonymous?

    Ex Preacher: What helpful insights have the New York Times and NPR provided?

  • ex-preacher

    How about this from NPR:

    - – - – -

    This is the type of spreading unrest most feared by Iran’s non-elected ruling clerics, who control all important decisions but are rarely drawn directly into political disputes. A long and bitter movement against Ahmadinejad could push the dissent past the presidency and target the theocracy itself.

    It also has the potential to embolden some members of the ruling inner circle, such as the powerful former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who strongly opposed Ahmadinejad during the campaign.

    “That sets you up for a tremendous split,” said Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It could be tremendously destabilizing because if the office of (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) is damaged, then the whole shape of leadership … moves into flux.”

    There’s widespread belief that Khamenei — the successor of the Islamic Revolution patriarch Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — will do what it takes to keep the system intact.

    He welcomed Ahmadinejad’s victory on Saturday. By Monday, however, he directed one of Iran’s most influential bodies, the Guardian Council, to examine claims of election fraud. The move had no guarantee it would satisfy those challenging Ahmadinejad’s re-election or quell their anger after the weekend unrest.

    The 12-member Guardian Council, made up of clerics and experts in Islamic law and closely allied to Khamenei, must certify ballot results and has the apparent authority to nullify an election. It would be an unprecedented step. Claims of voting irregularities went to the council after Ahmadinejad’s upset victory in 2005, but there was no official word on the outcome of the inquiry, and the vote stood.

    More likely, the intervention by Khamenei sought to lower the tensions and give some time for possible further talks with Mousavi, who was prime minister in the 1980s.

    [snip]

    At nightfall, Ahmadinejad opponents again shouted their denunciations from Tehran’s rooftops. Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “Allahu akbar!” — “God is great!” — echoed across the capital for a second night.

    It’s a deeply symbolic tactic that Mousavi borrowed from the Islamic Revolution and the idea that people power can challenge any system. The rooftop cries were how Khomeini asked Iran to show its unity against the Western-backed shah 30 years earlier.

  • http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com Lindsay Stallones

    Alex,

    True, with the Council of Guardians screening all candidates it’s hardly accurate to call Iran’s elections free and fair, there still is a distinction between selecting the candidates and reserving the right to reject candidates. Iran has the latter, and even within that restriction, it’s possible for mild reform movements to blossom.

    Ultimately, in order to transition to a liberal democracy, the regime will need to change and a new constitution will be adopted. However, violent overthrow of the hard-liners isn’t the only way to accomplish that. Reformers like Mousavi work within the system to effect that change peacefully, in the Islamic political tradition. That’s why, as ex-preacher says, it’s important to note that not only has Mousavi borrowed lingo from the 1979 Revolution (a revolution the young generation doesn’t remember and finds increasingly irrelevant to public policy), but also that so many of his followers are so eager to use it.

    The Islamic Revolution of 1979 wasn’t unilateral. Democratic reformists and communists participated and expected to mold the future of Iran in their image. Both were disappointed, and many leaders of those movements fled the country when the Islamicists gained power, but those sentiments are still alive, especially in urban centers like Tehran.

    Needless to say, I suppose, the Islamic Republic of Iran in its current form isn’t necessarily the only form it will ever have. It certainly isn’t the overwhelming will of its people, despite the strong face the government projects to the world. And really, it hasn’t been around very long, historically-speaking. As the generation of the 1979 Islamic Revolution ages and eventually passes, I don’t know if anyone can predict what succeeding generations will do.

  • smmtheory

    In order to believe that Mousavi is a reformer, you must believe that he has lied particularly well to the mullahcracy to hide his reformist personality. I think he is more opportunist than reformer. His policy positions were supposedly no different than those of his opponent. How does that reform anything?

  • http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com Dustin R. Steeve

    Lindsay,

    Yeah, I agree – it sounds like the television news channels have really blown it. This situation in Iran speaks a great deal to the effects of evil men in positions of great power. From what Ex has linked to, it sounds like NPR has done some good work covering this. Hugh Hewitt and other talk radio hosts have also covered this quite extensively. Hugh did three hours yesterday interviewing different people knowledgeable on Iran and its leadership. Below are the links to those interviews for anyone interested in listening to the podcast.

    Hour 1: http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/TalkRadio/Show.aspx?RadioShowID=5&ContentGuid=287a428b-e80c-4498-99c7-4e7997d5ba76

    Hour 2: http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/TalkRadio/Show.aspx?RadioShowID=5&ContentGuid=0971cd0d-a08b-4722-a8a5-c1863cda8951

    Hour 3: http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/TalkRadio/Show.aspx?RadioShowID=5&ContentGuid=5174c87c-0786-4036-b658-33968c62e844

    In addition to discussing the big questions surrounding the Iranian election, Hugh also discusses the implications of Twitter and new media on “reporting” from Iran. Citizen journalism turns out to be a powerful thing especially in the face of silence from mainstream television news.

  • Alex

    Dustin,

    I just listened to the first link. I have to say that I disagree with Hewitt’s overall enthusiasm. People are really getting their hopes up on this thing. A government that is responsible for terrorism isn’t going to be squeamish about killing a bunch of rioters. And they don’t have to do it in the open. I would bet people are going to die over this long after the riots have stopped.

    I think it’s interesting that Hewitt sees this as a possible solution to the nuclear problem. I think that is way too optimistic. If the clerics stay in power nothing is going to change. And if they are overthrown, I would seriously worry about some terrorist/military group running off with nuclear material. I guess we could send in special forces to secure the nuclear sites but that has risks. I’m not seeing a huge upside to having a country in chaos with a stockpile of nuclear material/equipment mixed in. Its pretty close to the scenario in Pakistan if the Taliban groups managed to destabalize the country.

  • http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com Chris Leigh

    Lindsay,

    I agree with your evaluation of our media. I almost posted something about the sad way that we, in our obsession with the whole Michael Jackson circus, have completely forgotten about any major news that was going on in our own country, let alone the cause of justice in Iran…but I thought that would have been too ironic.