Can You Keep a Secret? The media silence on Iran.

National Review Online ^ | August 7, 2002 | Michael Ledeen

[xsysmgr]

When I first came to Washington I met what I took for a hopelessly cynical man who asked me to define a secret. I stumbled, and he said that a secret was when you called a press conference and nobody reported what you said.

Apparently the media of the entire Western world have applied this standard to the dramatic events in Iran, because on Monday massive demonstrations were held in the country's major cities, from Tehran to Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashad, and others. The regime responded with unprecedented violence. There was widespread street fighting. More than 1,000 people were arrested. Several were apparently killed. Even late on Tuesday conflicts were ongoing in Khorassan, and not a single word appeared in a major Western publication, or on the news wires, or on any television broadcast of which I am aware.

So we have a new historical phenomenon: an invisible, unknown, and therefore secret revolution is under way in Iran.

And the question for the media is the following: Why do you refuse to report these events? For it is really hard to imagine that this information — which was not hard to obtain and to verify — is unknown to the Washington Post and Times, the New York Post and Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the major networks and the cable-news channels.

The only publication that had reported these events as of Tuesday evening was...National Review Online.

It rather reminds one of the days of the Cultural Revolution in China, or the immediate postwar period in Cambodia, when millions of people were killed and the West ignored the story. It was not that there were no journalists or others who knew what was going on; they simply refused to tell the story, for a variety of reasons. Some refused because they knew they'd be expelled — or worse — if they wrote the truth. Others refused because they sympathized with the regime and didn't want to give intellectual weapons to the regime's critics. Still others yielded to peer pressure, like the television "reporters" who apologized to Arafat when one lone Italian network broadcast the film of the Palestinian slaughter of two Israelis whose only crime was to have taken a wrong turn.

Iran is the mother of all terrorism, and the fall of the mullahs would be a major turning point in the modern history of the Middle East. If the details of the regime's desperate and savage struggle for survival were reported accurately and quickly, the West might yet rediscover its conscience and join with President Bush in declaring the regime an international pariah, thereby accelerating its demise.

If ever there were a story that warranted intense coverage, it is this one. If ever "the people's right to know" were at stake, it is here and now. Instead we have silence.

Why?

[Koblenz]

bttt

[TheDon]

Fascinating.

[eastforker]

I was also wondering why the press has been so quiet on other issues,makes on wonder doesn't it.BTTT

[spodefly]

I don't get it. It would seem that this would lend some credence to the idea that the masses under the theocratic rules in the ME would welcome and assist in the overthrow of the regimes we have identified as dangerous and that they suffer under everyday. It would potentially lend some support to the idea that there could be a popular uprising in Iraq against Saddahm if we can lend a hand.

We should be trumpeting this news, and doing anything we can to help the people of Iran in taking back their country from the theocracy.

The lack of coverage is mysterious.

[Dog]

ping!

[Dog]

Ping some people to this story.....this is a biggie!

[Dog]

Ping!

[Dog]

United States can't interfere in this ......let the people throw out the mullahs.

[Wright is right!]

"on Monday massive demonstrations were held in the country's major cities, from Tehran to Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashad, and others."

And why was this not reported? Simple. These demonstrations were NOT "anti-American" demonstrations. Had they been, the press would have been all over them.

Michael

[Miss Marple]

Is the media clueless, or are they actively keeping a lid on this? If they are deliberately doing so, why? Is it that they don't want to show that they were wrong about Iran, or is it a more sinister reason? (You will note that I refuse to believe they have a good reason for silence...I wasn't born yesterday.)

[Grampa Dave]

Iran is one of the media darlings of the left wing maggot mediots, who control the media in America.

They set up the overthrow of the Shah of Iran by the Mullah Islamakazis during the Carter years. They made the Shah look terrible and the Mullah Islamakazis as the saviors for Iran.

Then, the media made their Exported Islamakazi Terrorism an impossible thing to counter. For decades we have been brain washed that we can do nothing about the Exported Islamakazi Terrorism. We just have to take it for being the evil Americans we are.

What the Islamakazi Mullahs have done to the people of Iran is thousands of times worse than what the Shaw has done.

If the American Media turned on the Islamakazi Mullahs instead of making them semi heroes, they would fold in months.

This is why I hope that before we take out Iraq, that we take out the Islamakazis Mullahs in Iraq and their fascist Islamakazi brothers in Syria. That should take about 24 hours, and then we can stand back and let the people of Iran and Syria dispose of the remaining Islamakazi despots.

[Howlin]

Well, isn't THIS interesting. Even getting rid of everybody's satelite TVs during the fighting in Afghanistan didn't help, did it?

[Grampa Dave]

Okay coffee kick in:

Should be: This is why I hope that before we take out Iraq, that we take out the Islamakazis Mullahs in Iran and their fascist Islamakazi brothers in Syria.

[eno_]

If by "we" you mean the CIA, that is exactly what is happening.

[surely_you_jest]

The flavor of this report reminds me of the reports of the demonstrations in Iran before the Shah was deposed.

I have long been in favor of taking down Iran prior to Iraq. It is, however, beginning to look like the Iranians may take their own country back, perhaps with a little covert help.

Either way, it sure would be interesting to see the only remaining Muslim theocracy extant go down.

[Dems_R_Losers]

I agree with Grampa Dave. The US media apparently still think the mullahs are the "authentic" government of Iran because they overthrew the horrible Shah (i.e. the evil US puppet Shah). The depredations of this "authentic" government don't fit the preordained US media storyline: The Shah was bad, they threw out the Shah, therefore they must be good. A popular revolution against this "authentic" government, especially by people who openly proclaim their admiration for and desire to be more like the United States, simply does not fit into the US media's storyline. Very similar indeed to the failure to report on the killing fields in Cambodia by the "authentic" Commmunists who overthrew the "bad US puppet" regime.

Add to this the other US media storyline that extremist Islam is an unstoppable movement. It's important for the media to uphold this storyline because it makes the US war on terrorism ultimately futile, so eventually the media can start the drumbeat for and end to the "unwinnable war," less defense spending, negotiations with the terrorists, etc. If the Iranian people overthrow the Islamist government and institute a more Western-style democracy, then it becomes clear that the war on Islamism is winnable.

[TomSmedley]

Iran is filled with people who love America. On September 12, 2001, vast crowds in Tehran lit candles and grieved with our shocked nation. One reason for this affection is the hatred their ruling mullahs hold for the USA. A pundit I loathe said in a rare moment of insight,

Iran wiped out most of that generation in its eight-year war with Iraq. At its end in 1988, the Iranians were down to unarmed teenagers, which the mullahs sent in waves against Iraqi border emplacements where they were used as human shields for the few remaining armed and trained Iranian troops who followed behind.

The legacy of the war with Iraq is an Iranian population in which two-thirds of the Iranian population is under 25 and where the average age of the mullahs who conducted it is somewhere around 75.

Most of the generation of students who launched the revolution are dead. Their children view the revolution as a catastrophe that killed their parents and has stolen their freedom.

Perhaps, the God who took down communism so recently is working to discredit islam. We can pray so!

[Constitution Day]

BTTT

[Grampa Dave]

Isn't amazing how our eyes get opened each day on Free Republic. The link between the mediots not covering the mass murders of millions in SE Asia and Cambodia by the communists and the kid glove treatment of the Islamakazi Mullahs in Iran is now obvious.

We are in total agreement with your last paragraph in your reply to me. The mediots have worked for 2 decades to tell us that we can't fight Islamakazi Terrorism exported from the Mullah Despots of Iran.

Add to this the other US media storyline that extremist Islam is an unstoppable movement. It's important for the media to uphold this storyline because it makes the US war on terrorism ultimately futile, so eventually the media can start the drumbeat for and end to the "unwinnable war," less defense spending, negotiations with the terrorists, etc. If the Iranian people overthrow the Islamist government and institute a more Western-style democracy, then it becomes clear that the war on Islamism is winnable.

Amen brother, and this makes me wonder how much of this media Bravo Sierra has been bought by the massive inflow of Opecker $'s since the Days of Jimmy Carter?