For Coverage of Iran, Go To Twitter *UPDATED*

Green-clad supporters of Mousavi in the streets of Tehran as protests turn violent

Yesterday, I wrote a short post about the protests in Iran immediately following the election and specifically, about the mounting evidence that the voting process was not fair and likely tainted by fraud.

Today, the situation in Iran seems to be devolving further as the protests continue and the Iranian government cracks down on dissent in an increasingly violent way. Make no mistake, the men and women of all ages who have taken to the streets, to the blogosphere and to Twitter, are truly courageous in that their very lives can be in danger for speaking out against Iran’s repressive, extremist government. Only last year, the Iranian government wanted to pass a measure that would make bloggers who questioned or undermined the Iranian government and it’s religious hard-liners, subject to the death penalty. In such an atmosphere of repression, an Iranian college student who writes about their government’s response to the election protests, is truly a revolutionary act.

In this age of 24-7 news cycles and social media like Facebook and Twitter, there is little excuse for media coverage of what is taking place in Iran, to be lacking, and yet, at least with respect to American conventional media, it is.

Yesterday, while CNN and MSNBC, etc. covered the election results in Iran, their coverage was shockingly limited in scope and for a long time, CNN’s homepage didn’t even have the allegations of election fraud and the increasing violence as their top story. Today, that has changed somewhat due to the deservedly harsh criticism from internet activists and the international media. Readwriteweb.com had this to say about the American media’s sorry coverage of the events in Iran:

“The western world’s most feared government is shaking with insurrection in the streets after a contested election and the leading name in news, CNN, is shockingly absent from the story. Twitter, meanwhile, is how Iranians are communicating with the outside world. It’s the best place to follow events going on in that country and CNN’s failure to engage with the story is one of the hottest topics of conversation there.

Hours after Iranian police began clashing with tens of thousands of people in the street, the top story on CNN.com remains peoples’ confusion about the switch from analog TV signals.

One quip we’ve seen is that “Tienanmen + Twitter = Tehran.” Twenty years ago this month, CNN brought live news about the Tienanmen Square uprising to the world. It’s really strange that the network is absent from this story. CNN anchor and mega-Tweeter Rick Sanchez defensively Tweeted hours ago that he covered Iran throughout the afternoon on TV, so perhaps it’s just the CNN.com web team that’s incurring the wrath of news consumers. CNN’s official Twitter account has been silent for four hours.” [emphasis added]

Having spent a good portion of the very early morning on Twitter looking into what Iranians were actually saying and doing, it became clear that the above assessment was unfortunately, spot-on. It was on Twitter that I learned that there was a possibility that Mousavi (President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponent) had been placed under house arrest. The BBC was on this story, to their credit, but that was not the case with most of the American media outlets. By far, the best way to get up-to-the-minute information on what is going on, is to follow Mousavi’s tweets at http://twitter.com/mousavi1388 (Mousavi1388)- they are in both Arabic and English. Also, Huffington Post is doing a brilliant blow-by-blow account of the situation on the ground. You can check it out, here. Facebook has also become a great source of information both before and after the election and has a growing number of pro-Mousavi groups (an example can be found here) which are organizing to provide minute-by-minute coverage of the events in Iran and also aim to provide international support for the protesters.

President Ahmadinejad’s response to the mass protests in the way that most authoritarian, repressive leaders do- by essentially claiming everything is just fine:

“Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday dismissed violent protests against his election victory by comparing voters’ anger to a “football match.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed the election as an “example” for the entire world of the people’s will.
“Some people are sentimental and become excited,” he added. “As I said, I compared it to a soccer match. Their team has not won in the match.”

“In the end, I don’t think we’ll have any serious challenges,” he said. “Sentiments are high and sometimes they do some stuff on the streets, but in the end we had 40 million people participating and what is happening on the streets is like a football match.”

A football match? Uh, right. If the protests really are no big threat to the current government, then there would be no reason for the President to try to shut down blogs and international media outlets like the BBC, right? Wrong.

UPDATE: Vice President Biden expressed doubt about Iran’s election results on Meet the Press today, but he declined to go into further detail about the administration’s take on what is happening in Iran right now, probably to prevent accusations from Iran’s hard-line government, of US interference.

UPDATE II: Over at the Washington Note, Steve Clemons relays a conversation he had with a well-connected Iranian who says that at the highest levels of government, the situation in Iran is totally out of control and he fears some in Iran may resort to political assassinations.

Also, according to <a href="HuffPo, CNN has responded to a Twitter campaign criticizing CNN for it’s lack of Iranian election coverage yesterday and they have subsequently increased their coverage. I’ve been keeping up with CNN today and they really have increased the amount and quality of their coverage of the rioting in Tehran. See, social media can be used to speak truth to power!

Check out this video of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asking Iranian President Ahmadinejad about the safety of the opposition leader, Mousavi.

UPDATE III:Iran’s supreme leader orders investigation into election.

Advertisement