"According to the Ministry of Islamic Orientation and Culture in Tehran, 117 registered foreign media correspondents work in Iran. Yet (except for a stringer for a Japanese news agency who appeared at a demonstration in a car factory near Tehran) none paid attention to the workers' day of solidarity.
Osanloo's lawyers phoned the offices of more than a dozen Western news agencies and radio and TV networks in Tehran in the hope of persuading them to cover the events - with no results.
Inside Iran, some see global conspiracy to keep international opinion in the dark about what is really happening in the Islamic Republic. They ask: Why is it that world media representatives in Iran never interview any of the thousands of trade unionists, teachers' leaders, journalists, student activists, women's-lib militants and dissident intellectuals? Why is the brutal repression in several provinces, which has already claimed scores of lives, never covered on the spot?
The authorities admit they've arrested almost a million people in the last four months, keeping them for anything from several hours to several weeks. Yet the news from Iran is focused on the mullahs' defiance of the U.N. on the nuclear issue.
There is no conspiracy; the global media's silence on Iran's internal turmoil can be explained by three facts:
* Some Western editors are sympathetic to the Islamic Republic, which they see as a plucky Third World regime standing up against Western, especially American, "Imperialist bullying."
* Tehran refuses to admit the representatives of media outlets it regards as "hostile." As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicated last week in his visit to the Islamic Republic News Agency's headquarters in Tehran, information is allowed only if it serves "the interests of our revolution."
Translation: Liberals run the yellowstream media. Liberals hate America. Iran hates America. Match. Made. In heaven. (Editor: change that to hell?)
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