The New York Times and the Iranian election

by BarryGrey, WSWS

The response of the US media to the Iranian election says more about the state of democracy and the so-called “free press” in America than it does about the state of democratic rights in Iran.

The coverage by the New York Times typifies a presentation of the victory of the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over his main challenger, former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, that abandons any pretense of journalistic objectivity. It is sheer propaganda aimed at discrediting the election result.

Mousavi Lost: He Insulted the People of Iran and Wasn’t Supported by Khamenei

by Scott Creighton

It’s hard to get real info out of Iran right now that isn’t tainted by Burson-Marsteller spin. TalkingPointsMemo is actually running a story saying that the neocons supported Ahmadinejad. This of course, flies in the face of the fact that the neocons have been running “pro-democracy” reformist political groups inside Iran for years now. The idea is simple, take the one group all the progressives hate, and get them to stand up for the guy in Iran who is anti-Western capitalism, and thereby condemning him by association.

Just do it fast enough so that no one has time to do any real research into the matter.

Progressive Blogs Pushing “Shadow CIA” Spin on Iran

by Scott Creighton

This is just a quicky here… DailyKos and many other “Progressive” blogs are really pushing this “election fraud in Iran” thing.  Problem is, most of their info is coming from what they call “leading farsi sites“, not very concrete. The neo-con/neo-lib think tanks have been running “pro-democracy” sites in Iran for years. Their goal is not really democracy, unless you think of Chile under Pinochet as “democracy”. The candidate who lost is one of the wealthiest men in the world. He left his elected position in Iran years ago under suspicion of wide-spread corruption. He is a free-market zealot who wants to open up the trade restriction, privatize everything including the oil production, and establish a privately owned central banking system like our Federal Reserve. He is in fact, just another version of the Shah.

Now what we have is the “progressive” sites rampaging through the news cycle, reporting anything they get spoon-fed from an “inside source” as fact. The problem is, if you consider the source, chances are, much of this may not be fact.