Who to Believe

Furthermore, the authorities link 6 hangings of unnamed people, to the protests. It cannot be confirmed if these hangings took place, and if they had any connection to the protests.

The Iranian PressTV is a hundred percent propaganda station, but the journalistic principles of objectivity and verification forces the Western press also to view opposition reports with scepticism.

Today this was posted on Twitter by a user I have been following for a while:


The problem of verifying deaths, of course, relates to the proper assessment of the ferocity of the clamp-downs.

The Iranian government, having a clear interest in downplaying the physical assaults on protesters, is reported to hide bodies.

Iranian expatriates frequently state that any number provided by the government on deaths or arrests of protesters must be multiplied with four, while sources inside Iran says to multiply by ten.

An Iranian journalist named Omid Habibinia, cited by an Italian paper, reports 100 protesters killed and 2700 detained.

Consistent pattern of lying

The Iranian government has shown a consistent pattern of distorting the truth in the aftermath of the 2009 election, itself contested for being settled by voter fraud.

Of the lies and conspiracy theories Ahmadinejad, Iranian officials and the Iranian state run PressTV have aired, the most conspicuous is the multi-tiered speculations about the death of Neda:

Today the Interpol denied that they - as Iranian PressTV had claimed - were looking for the doctor, who tried to save Neda and later had to flee Iran for fear of persecution.

Earlier Iranian media have accused a BBC reporter for staging Neda's murder to get good footage.

In its frantic spin circus Iran has also accused CIA of being behind the killing and aired statements suggesting Neda was a basij volunteer killed by protesters.

Likewise, USA and Israel have been accused of being behind the accusations of vote rigging in the election, just like France, Germany and UK have been accused of inciting riots in Iran.

CNN in "even-handed coverage" crisis

CNN missed police destruction of private property

From June 30, possibly in response to widespread outrage over erroneous and slow-paced CNN coverage - in the twitterverse and blogosphere known as #cnnfail or #cnnepicfail - lots of videos documenting police destroying private property began to come out.

These clips, however, were available days prior to Octavia Nasr's comments on CNN. The above video dated June 22 shows how uniformed police officers destroys public property, in contrast to the "confession" aired on PressTV and featured in the CNN show.

This video was distributed on Twitter, and it was in fact the first video to lead my attention to the destruction of private property by police in Iran.

The "confessions" on Iranian PressTV were obviously staged to counter the negative effect from this imagery going viral on the Internet.

How could CNN miss that? Why did they not juxtapose these clips with the PressTV clip?

Well, Octavia Nasr stops herself mid-sentence, when she is just about to profile the citizen journalists in Iran. Was she about to say "which could as well be propagandists" or "which totally takes sides with the opposition"?

Realizing there is something fundamentally flawed with her "even-handed" 50-50 distrubution of credibility or lack thereof - considering Iranian authorities have barred foreign journalists, while the protesters are actually exercizing and encouraging free speech - Octavia Nasr wrings her hands, excusing the Western media workers with very few reports coming out.

How few reports were available on June 25?

Let's look at the claim of a bottle neck in communication from the citizen journalists in Iran, aired on June 25 2009:

A group of citizens journalists did exactly what CNN claims to have been doing, compiling updates from trusted sources in Iran and other citizens journalism outlets, as well as updated reports from mainstream media.

The coverage from June 25 begins here, but it is also important to look at previous updates, ranging all the way back to the election on June 12.

Since the extensive, in depth covering had been going on for almost two weeks at this point it was possible to isolate primary sources on the ground in Iran and vet them for consistency and reliability.

These are some of the reports coming in on that day:

Basij, Mortazavi - genre stories in #iranelection

The reports of deaths in Lalehzar Square and following arrests are, of course, subject to the PR battle for control of death tolls.

But other reports were coming out, for instance this interview with a Basij member on Tehran Broadcast, published June 24.

It is verified by The Guardian's Robert Tate on The Guardian's Live Blog, proably citing Rooz Online, an Iranian magazine published since May 10, 2005, the year where Iran's previous election caused a massive spike in media attention to Iran.


Coverage of the Basij, a hitherto unknown phenomenon to many in the West, were already at this point a genre story drawing massive coverage and widespread investigation.

Another important aspect of the coverage was profiles of the primary players in the Iranian election dispute.

Times Online on the date in question published a profile of Saeed Mortazavi, also known as "the butcher of the press".

The government is not calling it a spin, obviously

On Twitter the PressTV method of deriving "confessions" was commented on:

It is hardly unknown to the press that torture is employed. A picture is emerging here. It would not be difficult to get a qualified observer, such as an Iranian expatriate with expert credentials, to state the likelihood the "socalled confessions" are derived from torture, threats or coercion.

Yet there is no word about torture in the entire clip. Instead CNN airs a lot of blatantly absurd clips from the Iranian state TV. Follwowing this Octavia Nasr proceeds with this truly astonishing summary of the story:

What really happened on June 25?

June 25 was also the day when the world discovered that the clerics were split. This had been the contention of Iranian observers on Twitter from day one, but Western media was not ready to take the analysis so far.

The citizen journalist got the picture:


On June 25 one of the most conspicous signs of how deep the Iranian crisis goes was a report of money flight from Iran, a report to be ignored for one or two more days by the media.

Also, the government clamp-down on independent media expressing support for the opposition was evident to all:

Farsi reports also pointed out that bazaaris were among the supporters of the opposition and strikes had begun.

Did the Iranians on the ground misinform?

Concering credibility, Iranian Press TV - Octavia Nasr admits as much - shows no violence against protesters and offers opposing views no air time. The citizens journalists who are being equalled to Press TV, only with the reverse bias, did bring reports the other way around:


Sea of Green was struggling to keep the movement completely non-violent, but numerous videos on YouTube displayed protesters clashing with government forces. A leading member of the pro-Mousavi users on Twitter even wrote:

That was too late. The graphic videos were flooding YouTube and other social news sites allowing for streaming, including those showing police and basij having to flee from crowds of stone-throwing protesters.

Reports from the ground consistently showed a bias towards the truth, even if detrimental to the non-violent image:

Reports: Army Helicopter droping Chemicals on ppl at Enghelab Sq.

All reports from June 25, the day CNN defended its meagre coverage by aligning Iranian ground reports with Iranian government controlled media.

It was in the oposition's clear interest to withhold information about protesters fighting, defending the image as non-violent, yet the twitterverse was abuzz with reports of clashes and the blogosphere ripe with video documentation.

"Even-handed" does not offer fairness

This is not written to mock or demote CNN or Western media workers, but to hightlight a gross problem in media coverage from conflict zones outside the West.

Even prior to the June 2009 election many Middle Eastern observers have complained about the disruptive influence of "even-handed" coverage in a region, where authorities are unscrupulous liars, preserving their power with a vicious combination of violent oppression and outright lies.

As a professional media worker I do understand, of course, that established media working under demands for strict objectivity, cannot rely on reports from anonymous sources on social media or consistently and uncritically broadcast biased opinions, even against an oppressive regime like the Iranian.

But the CNN clip in question reveals far more than reluctance to rely on reports from citizens involved in a political conflict. The coverage, the comments and the composition of elements indicate an alarming degree of ignorance.

This, however, does not excuse you from simply not realizing that, for instance, the Iranian government does know they are spinning events to their advantage and unscrupulously using threats, torture, coercion, bribery and false witnesses to boost their own case. How is that for bias?

If CNN coverage must be "even-handed", why then keep for instance a video documenting destruction of property by government forces off the coverage, when it could have countered the "confessions" CNN obviously know are false?

If using a source as biases as Iranian state TV is legit, howcome no segments from citizens journalists in Iran are aired to secure 50-50 distribution of air time?

The absurdity of "equal distribution of scepticism"

Stating that "they truly believe the demonstrations are illegal" and "they feel they need to put their side of the story out" displays an extraordinary ignorance about the context of the entire debacle, one even more astonishing coming from a journalist who is the editor of the Middle East section of a multinational broadcasting cooperation.

Octavia Nasr ends her statement:


Well, the reason the media is not "able to report the story from the middle" is that Iranian government has barred journalists from doing so, arresting Iranians and kicking out or confining Westerners.

The reason for doing so is clearly stated: Western media, in particular VOA and BBC, are blamed for inciting riots, just like USA and Israel have been accused of fabricating the election fraud accusations.

It should be obvious to any thinking mind that simply offering 50-50 airtime in any given conflict is the least professional approach to journalism possible and a fundamental moral hazard to the profession.

Essentially, it means that you can take a conflict between a hard right racist organization and any group of opponents and frame a story so it appears that both sides possess a portion of the truth.

Reporters and citizen journalists must cooperate

Any reporter knows "it is not what you know, but what you can prove", and as a journalist you live with a vast pool of knowledge you have in private but cannot utilize in reports, because it would make people accuse you of wearing that famous tin foil hat.

The trick is to utilize this basic knowledge, the background facts and invisible factors you cannot show in pictures, to seek out sources who can validate it.

June 25 also offered this extraordinary piece of journalism from an Afghan tea house, where Iranian truckers were debating the election.

Cleverly, Philip Schmucker from McClatchy circumvented the Iranian ban on foreign media reports by interviewing Iranians just outside the Iranian border.

It does not prove voter fraud in the Iranian election, but it does highlight some of the fundamental sentiments, attitudes and opinions behind this tremendous outburst of public outrage.

It also shows, even if only in a fragment, that the frequent claims in Western media the uprising is one of the young middle class elite is "a truth with limitations." Truckers in Iran are hardly a part of Tehran academia.

In a day and age where citizens reports can more accurately portray a major political crisis with vast geopolitical effects, even if it depends on the mainstream media's efforts to fact check and amplify reports, there is an obvious need to establish new principles of reporting.

Internet users are more adequately informed

In Holland a group of media workers have invited bloggers and Twitter users and Iranian expatriates to a public meeting to discuss how cooperation between the various groups can be improved.

Following and covering events on Twitter and other social news platforms, even viewing and reviewing authentic YouTube video documentation, requires a new set of journalistic tools.

It also demands from journalist that they apply the traditional tools, such as background research, rigorous examination and employment of the proper experts.

The Iran election crisis could have been far more adequately covered, if Iranian expatriates had been engaged as sources, particularly those who have academic or professional merits on the relevant subjects.

Video material and blog reports like The Green Brief could have been used far more effectively, if journalistic reservations had not restricted them to websites with disclaimers, but aired with the proper use of expert analysis.

This is not an academic report about the mainstream media coverage of the Iranian election, and I obviously do not have a 360 degree view of what the world press has aired.

So far my assessment is that web users who have been following reports on Twitter, YouTube and relevant blogs are far more adequately informed than people who have been reading papers and watching television.

Fundamental attribution error

The most signficant proof of this is the numerous occasions, where media reports have claimed protests have stopped, that things have returned to normal in Iran or that authorities seem to have regained control - while in fact the supporters of the movement have grown in numbers, new shapes of protests have continuously been created, and large parts of Iranian commerce involved in strikes.

Also, the major news outlets only recently began to pick up on the split in the ranks of all institutions in Iran, while the Iranian government is facing diplomatic isolation. This was the framework, the political context, the majority of Iranian citizen journalists worked inside all along.

Even the most superficial glance at Iranian politics would have convinced reporters Moussavi could not have made such damning statements against the political establishment in Iran, if he had not had the backing from powerful clerics and politicians like Rafsanjani and Khatami.

Instead, the fundamental assumptions about the Iranian protests were wrong. And in journalism, when you work under a flawed set of premises, you twist the entire story.

Until you begin to spin coverage in favour of an oppressive regime barring foreign media reports from the streets, jailing journalists, closing down media, faking confessions and airing blatant lies - and even goes as far as to testify to the sincerity of "the other side in the conflict".

Coming from a "journalist, lecturer and expert on Middle East affairs" comments like these are deeply distrubing:

Hardly...

Posted July 2 2009, last updated July 6 2009