The twopenny-halfpenny war by Reuters & ‘Iranintl’ on Iran

A little history is worthwhile.

A former bureau chief for Reuters in Iran, Hafezi achieved journalistic notoriety in 2012, when she okayed the publication of a video story — by the then-Reuters employee and now-France 24 anchor Sanam Shantyaei — titled, “Thousands of female Ninjas train as Iran’s assassins.” Her subject matter? Young, female, private Iranian citizens training in Ninjutsu.

Even though Reuters, the news arm of the company Thomson Reuters, later changed the story, Hafezi and Shantyaei jointly managed to get the London-based news agency’s accreditation in Iran suspended at the time. Reuters also reportedly dismissed Shantyaei over the debacle.

But lessons were not learned.

Reuters continued, even more aggressively, to provide an incessantly negative coverage of Iran. Anti-Iran stories abound on the news agency’s Iran page to this day. (And not coincidentally, Hafezi’s name more often than not appears on the by-line of those stories.)

Systematic bias
A well-sourced Western journalist told me on the condition of anonymity that Reuters is most likely deliberate and systematic in its negative reportage of Iran.

“Reuters is seemingly on a mission to make the constant bad news it reports on Iran become reality,” he said. “Especially since it got its accreditation suspended and was expelled from Iran for a period of time.”

The news agency was already taking it too far during the nuclear negotiations between Iran and originally six world powers as well as the European Union (EU) in the Austrian capital of Vienna sometime back in 2015.

“During the nuclear negotiations in Vienna, Reuters’ people actually made things up, were called out on it, and were [even] barred from background briefings,” the Western journalist further told me.

Still, that track record may be about to be surpassed.

Enter “Iran International” / “Iranintl”
It calls itself that. A television, together with an accompanying website, a Twitter feed, and a Telegram channel (all of them in Persian for now), that describes its “mission” as follows:
“To provide a fair and balanced view of what happens inside Iran - and also to share news and views from all over the world for an Iranian population which needs a perspective on the world outside Iran's borders.”

And on the website of Ofcom, the British media regulatory office, the licensee of “Iran International” is registered as Global Media Circulating Limited, a company reportedly owned by a Saudi Arabian national.

The television arguably outdid Reuters on Saturday, September 22, 2018.

Terrorists on media & media terrorists
That day, terrorists opened fire on people during a military parade in the Iranian southwestern city of Ahvaz, where there is an Iranian-Arab population. At least 25 people, including women and children, were killed in that attack, and another 68 were wounded.

An armed separatist group soon took responsibility.

Shortly after the terrorist attack, “Iran International,” or “Iranintl,” called a purported spokesman for that terrorist group, identified him by name, “welcomed” him to the live interview, and gave him airtime to attempt to justify the unjustifiable and rave against Iran.

Let me be clear: that is unprecedented behavior in the history of the media.

Criticism naturally followed.

Defiant, and in the face of that criticism, “Iranintl” soon said it merely intended “to perform [our] professional duty and get the group’s official reaction.”

Basically, “Iranintl” has a Rolodex that includes the number of a terrorist group’s purported spokesperson, it calls him to “get the group’s official reaction,” and it then calls that professional journalism.
What a show!

Still later, the television’s “news director” Ali Asghar Ramezanpour offered an even more outlandish explanation.

“When the Iranian government claims that… group [X] has carried out this [attack], our duty, in terms of information dissemination and professional news work, is to contact that group through the [pause] in fact [pause] news networks that we know of, and ask… [the group] whether or not the Iranian government’s claim is true; and we did just that,” Ramezanpour said in footage aired on the television’s channel.

He went on to name a number of “free and professional” media outlets that he said “also did the same interview.” Curiously, he named only one outlet that, according to Ramezanpour himself, actually did a similar interview: Radio Farda — a Persian news outlet that, together with VOA Persian and BBC Persian, is notorious for its founding anti-Iran agenda.

Read his exact words — wherein lies his most laughable claim:
“In fact, we were the first one to do this (interview the armed group). But after us, other media did the same interview; say, Radio Farda has done this. The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, all of these [media outlets] cited us… Therefore, it’s a routine news practice,” Ramezanpour said. [Emphasis added]

It is possible that I now look pretty much like one of those poker face stickers you use on your instant messaging applications! But it isn’t funny. Far from it. It is a tragedy.

In “citing” “Iranintl,” The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian must have thought — and rightly so — that a television airing a terrorist group’s statements is, not suspiciously, linked to that group. (That is, of course, if we take Ramezanpour’s claim that the two outlets “cited” “Iranintl” to be true — something unworthy of time to fact-check.)

The Western journalist who talked to me described that live interview as “clearly pre-meditated.”

When I asked if, throughout his career in first-class media, he knew of any precedence for an outlet giving airtime to an armed group after a terrorist attack, he was unequivocal: “Never has such a thing happened on any media.”

“Iranintl” then attempted to do some damage control. It published an article on its website titled “Ahvaz; terrorism is terrorism,” apparently seeking to refute any dichotomy between “good terrorism” and “bad terrorism” and to censure terrorism in all its forms.
A disclaimer that often appears on opinion pages was posted at the end of that article… except that it was, well, different. “This article does not reflect Iran International’s viewpoint,” it read in an emphatic negative.

Taken in context, disavowing the article that blatantly denoted that “Iranintl” did not believe that the Ahvaz attack was of a terrorist nature. In so doing, “Iranintl” effectively agreed with the purported terrorist spokesperson it had interviewed on live TV. On several occasions during the interview, the spokesperson had referred to the targets as “legitimate.”

So much for “a fair and balanced view of what happens inside Iran!”

Given “Iranintl’s” unenviably swift rise to the heights of infamy, the television is nothing to be taken seriously. To be sure, it is massively funded by shadowy sources in its petty war on Iran; but, in its quiet attempts to recruit media people from inside Iran with sums of at least 4,000 pounds a month, “Iranintl” has been able to assemble only the farcically unprofessional team that it has.

Nonetheless, “Iranintl” is sinful. Its personnel are complicit either through ignorant or conscious participation. And the world stands to judge.

*

Iranian Ambassador to the UK Hamid Ba’eedinejad called the interview “shameful,” and later announced that the Iranian Embassy in London had filed a complaint with Ofcom, the British media regulatory office, against “Iranintl.”

Of course, it is noteworthy that, while other media outlets refused to do exactly what “Iranintl” did, they did give away their anti-Iranian sentiments when they collectively refused to refer to the Ahvaz attack as a “terrorist” one. All of them, Reuters included, invariably used the words and phrases “an attack,” “a militant attack,” “an attack by gunmen,” and similar wording in their coverage of the incident, avoiding the term “terrorist” at all times, except when directly citing Iranian media, officials, witnesses, or victims.

That is especially noteworthy since Daesh — a terrorist group that has killed civilians and non-civilians in European cities — also took responsibility for the Ahvaz attack! (As of Wednesday afternoon, “Iranintl” is yet to call Daesh!)

Iran’s enemies are not confined to the farcical. The country has endured much for its fundamental principle of not yielding to bullying, sabotage, terror, and even war. Its enemies range from terrorists who open fire at women and children to television networks that abet those terrorists, to foreign governments that fund the former two.

In spite of them all, Iran stands united; and the shedding of the blood of innocent people will come back to haunt anyone who — in media form or otherwise — supports such bloodletting.