EVALUATING WESTERN MEDIA COVERAGE OF IRAN’S ELECTIONS

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 26 Jun 2009

Sara Khorshid

Cairo – I find it difficult to know and understand what’s really going on in Iran. Every time I log on to the internet and go to reputable news sites, Iran is making headlines.

But I am still confused and ignorant about whether the election results are legitimate or not, and whether the majority of Iranians are against conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or if the rallying masses constitute a minority within a 70 million person population.

Although news feeds about the current situation in Iran abound, the image depicted by Western media is generally subjective, siding with the Iranian opposition in what is often portrayed as a good-versus-evil drama.

I am not sure what I think about events that appear in Western media to be an uprising against the Islamic Revolution. My common sense tells me that it’s not unusual for defeated oppositions to express objection over elections’ results; it happens in many elections, in both democratic and undemocratic countries.

Over the past few decades, Iranian elections have been known to be "fair".

Despite the limitations imposed by the system when it comes to running for parliamentary and presidential elections, we generally feel that those who manage to make it to official candidacy do contest in fair elections.

Yes, there is a possibility of widespread fraud or inaccuracy, but there is no hard evidence that this is the case yet, and it doesn’t entail Western hailing of the losing candidate Mir Houssein Mousavi as a victim of conspiracy.

That masses are rallying to support Mousavi doesn’t necessarily mean he is the most popular Iranian leader, or that his rights have been infringed upon by the incumbent president Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the conservatives of Iran. Ahmadinejad too has had thousands rally for him on different occasions.

The same goes for other political leaders who are unfriendly to the West, like Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah, for whom hundreds of thousands of Lebanese supporters rally.

Now Western media is furious over clashes between Iranian police and protesters, which were perhaps expected given the warning Iranian authorities had issued against demonstrating in protest of the election results. The level of violence may vary, but police clash with protesters everywhere in the world, including the numerous anti-US demonstrations in South Korea, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. When it happens in Iran, however, the world gets furious.

In my city, Cairo, State Security policemen usually far outnumber protesters and easily crack down on them. They sexually harass protesters; when my female friends attend a protest, they make sure to wear pants beneath their skirts to make it more difficult for plainclothes police forces to do so. Yet, global media reports of infamous incidents of protest crackdowns in Egypt are mild. These are just small stories in the Middle East section of BBCNews.com or CNN.com.

On the day of US President Barack Obama’s speech from Cairo, police forces emptied streets and suppressed innocent Egyptian by-passers who tried to walk or ride cars on streets that are normally busy. My friend’s father was prohibited from standing on his balcony because he lives near Cairo University. However, this was not the leading story in Western media outlets.

Egypt once fit the profile that Western media likes, in 2005, amid the first contested presidential election in Egypt, which was in line with former US President George W. Bush’s democracy promotion policies. Back then, we would read and hear about what the media called "the winds of change" that were supposedly "blowing in Egypt".

But when parliamentary elections took place a few months later with relatively more freedom and fairness than in previous elections, and 88 Muslim Brotherhood figures became members of parliament, only then did "the winds of change" stop blowing. The media stopped giving priority to Egypt, where a severe, illegal crackdown on opposition was to deepen. Egypt’s parliamentary elections sent an alarm to the West and triggered fear of the rise of politicised Islam.

So let’s not celebrate yet. Iranian protesters might not really be overthrowing the regime. Instead, the media should pursue more accuracy and impartiality. Iran’s restrictions on Western media don’t justify siding with the opposition, even if violence against peaceful protesters is not acceptable.

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Sara Khorshid (sarakhorshid@gmail.com) is an Egyptian journalist. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from Al Arabiya News Channel.

Source: Al Arabiya News Channel, 22 June 2009, www.alarabiya.net.

Copyright permission is granted for publication.

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