Saturday, July 11, 2009

Good Reporting on Iran

One month has passed since the disputed presidential election in Iran. Iran was front page news until South Carolina governor Mark Sandfordwas caught cheating on his wife. Then Michael Jackson died and well, so much for serious reporting. What do you expect? Isn't two weeks enough?

All the hours of broadcasting and pages of news print didn't really tell us very much of importance anyway. It has been little more than stale rehashes of the "Ahmadinejad is crazy" narrative and assumptions that charges of election fraud were valid. Neda Sultan's terrible death was chronicled, but alas, America's killing of thousands of innocent people goes unreported. Protests in Tehran were covered, but most of the anti-war protests that I attended in New York or Washington passed without any media attention.

Today I checked out Asia Times and found the only thing I have read that makes since of the Iran situation. Mahan Abedin does a great job of explaining the roles of all the players in this situation. Of course if we had real journalism, this caliber of reporting wouldn't be unusual. But we don't, so it is.

Do yourself a favor and read the Asia Times article.