It has now become a daily occurrence to read news stories and features about Iran in the American media; the themes cover the country, its people and culture, their government, the faith of Islam, and so on. But every one of them is explicitly negative to the nth degree.
What we are experiencing in American print and broadcast media these days is a textbook case of propaganda tactics designed to help George W. Bush and his international war-mongering colleagues (including the current Canadian government) drum up support for a collective military assault on Iran.
In effect, Mr. Bush has started a new and ugly cold war and he clearly intends to transform it into a hot one, sooner rather than later; the media and political hype will translate into real aggression, bringing death, misery and destruction to yet another Middle East state. The evil character of human greed and power-lust is about to raise its ugly specter once again and subjugate a weaker nation that refuses to toe the American line.
It is all part of a long-planned Bush and Co. agenda and that is why you won’t find a single good word in the American mainstream media about Iran — none, nil, zero.
You will search in vain to read a balanced viewpoint about Iran and the made-in-America crisis that is unfolding even at this very moment between the two countries. The supposed sticking-point is nuclear know-how. But while Iran’s venture into nuclear civil technology has drawn the focused hostility of the U.S., other countries – like Brazil, which has a more advanced nuclear program than Iran – are barely noticed.
The compound issue of women’s rights and equality is another target area of U.S.-influenced Western media in Iran. A recent news story published by the Los Angeles Times and syndicated to Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper, the Toronto Star, was ostensibly about the role and conditions of women in Iran.
But no mention was made of the fact that more Iranian women per capita serve as Parliamentarians in that country than in either the U.S or Canada. And there was no mention that the ratio of young Iranian women over men studying medicine, engineering, and the sciences is also proportionally much higher than in the U.S. and Canada.
What are incomplete biased news stories and features like this trying to tell their readers? Here is an example of so-called reporting that assumes there is only one side to the news…
"Police are cracking down on barbers giving Western-style haircuts and shop owners wearing T-shirts with English slogans. They are looking for women wearing headscarves that are too small or colourful. Authorities also recently announced they would filter mobile phone messages that they deem to be ‘immoral’."
Or, here is an example with numbers used to prove a questionable point: "Last month, an Iranian newspaper reported that security forces warned 11 European tourists visiting a vegetable market in northern Tehran to observe the Islamic dress code."
You may think that the American press is genuinely interested in issues like women’s rights, social justice, equal opportunity, economic health, etc. in developing countries, and that the examples I’ve cited here fall into that category.
But think again.
Where will you find a news story about the condition of Iraqi women under the American occupation? Who will report that their welfare under Saddam Hussein was measurably better?
Similarly, the condition of Afghani women – among the poorest and least-protected in the world – is among the most under-reported issues in the global media today, as they suffer in the shadow of an American-led occupation of their country. Their predicament is shared by native Palestinian women in the West Bank and Gaza, who have suffered under a brutal racist occupation for a full four decades (since June 5, 1967).
So don’t expect to find fairness or balance about Iran anytime soon in the American (free?) press – not while the Bush administration is calling the shots.
