As negotiations begin in Geneva between Iran, Germany and the U.N. Security Council permanent members, Juan Cole debunks the prevailing myths about Iran. Myths that could not endure if U.S. news outlets took journalism seriously and challenged U.S. officialdom on Iran.
About Steve RendallSenior Media Analyst and Co-producer of CounterSpin Steve Rendall is FAIR's senior analyst. He is co-host of CounterSpin, FAIR's national radio show. His work has received awards from Project Censored, and has won the praise of noted journalists such as Les Payne, Molly Ivins and Garry Wills. He is co-author of The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error (The New Press, 1995, New York City). Rendall has appeared on dozens of national television and radio shows, including appearances on CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC, MTV and Fox Morning News. He was the subject of a profile in the New York Times (5/19/96), and has been quoted on issues of media and politics in publications such as the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and New York Times. Rendall contributed stories to the International Herald Tribune from France, Spain and North Africa; worked as a freelance writer in San Francisco; and worked as an archivist collecting historical material on the Spanish Civil War and the volunteers who fought in it. Rendall studied philosophy and chemistry at San Francisco State University, the College of Notre Dame and UC Berkeley.
Steve, I think the corpress takes journalism very seriously – dead seriously, in fact.
There seems to be this perception among many media watchdog groups that these propaganda outlets don't commit these acts of commission and omission out of venal and vicious intent – that they're due to ignorance or laziness or some other reason aside from simple lust for power and money.
If you have facts that support this contention, please relate them. You can always point to the occasional decent, or excellent, work that pops up from time to time – but aren't they the exceptions that prove the rule?
I try to be an empiricist, and decades of reading, listening and watching these enablers of the powerful (and thus members of that cancerous clique) lead me to the eminently logical conclusion that they mean to do us harm in order to do themselves great benefit.
I guess that's the Vulcan in me.
[...] http://www.fair.org/blog/2009/10/01/top-things-you-think-you-know-about-iran-that-are-not-true/ . [...]