Glenn Greenwald wrote recently of the extraordinarily limited media debate on Iran, which seems to consist of U.S. and Israeli officials making threats–attack now or attack later–alongside clinical discussions of the difficulties of bombing Iran. There is plenty missing–actual Iranians talking about what war would mean in human terms,legal experts discussing how preventive war (or even the threat of one) violates international law, and so on. Today's New York Times editorial (3/6/12) offers another illustration of just how limited this media discussion is. The paper states: Iran's nuclear appetites are undeniable, as is its malign intent toward Israel, toward America, [...]
Feb
21
2012
Bombing Iran: A Real Headache for Israel
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Bombing Iran could be a real strain for Israel, reports Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times ("Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets," 2/19/12). No one's sure they can pull it off, what with the logistics involved: Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran's air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously–and use at least 100 planes. Everyone apparently agrees on the task in front of Israel, as Bumiller puts it: "Given that [...]
Feb
17
2012
Is Iraq Media Failure 'Coloring' Iran Coverage?
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Huffington Post reporter Michael Calderone (2/17/12) has a fairly comprehensive lookat the way media are covering Iran (I wish he'd cited FAIR's long record on this; perhaps next time). The point is that Iran coverage looks a whole lot like Iraq coverage, circa 2002. Really bad, in other words. Calderone gets a pretty revealing comment from an insider: One national security reporter, who has covered the intelligence community and Iran but was not authorized to comment, says that pre-Iraq War coverage and recent Iran coverage are "terrifyingly similar." "I don't think we are falling totally back into where we were [...]
Feb
15
2012
NYT: 'Scrutiny' of Iran's Nuke Sites Means Bombing Them
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The media coverage of Iran is terrible, and seems to be getting worse–see Glenn Greenwald's latest piece on the ABC and NBC nightly newscasts. And today the New York Times (2/15/12) tells readers this about Iran's nuclear program: The new uranium enrichment plant, known as Fordo, has raised Western concerns because it is buried deep underground, making it more impervious to scrutiny. That struck me as odd, since Fordo is, like other Iranian nuclear facilities, regularly inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. And the Times seems to know this, since a few paragraphs later, correspondent Rick Gladstone reported: Last [...]
Feb
13
2012
Do TV Networks 'Practice' for War?
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Alexander Cockburn's latest piece at CounterPunch (2/10/12) included this from a tipster: I was visiting ABC News the other day to see a friend who works on graphics. When I went to his room, he showed me all the graphics he was making in anticipation of the Israeli attack on Iran; not just maps, but flight patterns, trajectories and 3-D models of U.S. aircraft carrier fleets. But what was most disturbing–was that ABC, and presumably other networks, have been rehearsing these scenarios for over two weeks, with newscasters and retired generals in front of maps talking about missiles and delivery [...]
Feb
03
2012
Iran and the Threat of Not Having Future Wars
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The conventional understanding you get from the media is that Israel is worried that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a serious threat to the country's existence. Is that really what's happening, though? Another interpretation is that Iran might want nuclear weapons not to launch any such an attack but to prevent an attack on its country–nuclear deterrence, in other words. (Of course, it's important to note that there is currently no evidence that Iran is pursuing a weapons program.) I was struck when I heard Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman bring up some of these ideas on NPR's Talk of the [...]
Feb
01
2012
Iran: This Is What Propaganda Looks Like
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Alarmist corporate media coverage of the "threat" from Iran is everywhere, thanks to a Senate appearance yesterday by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. But Clapper said very little in his remarks that would justify the propagandistic coverage we're seeing. His main point was that Iran could launch attacks if it felt threatened. It is hard to see how this is particularly surprising. Clapper pointed to the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. as evidence that Iran seems more eager to assert itself, perhaps even inside the United States. But there were many people who [...]
Jan
30
2012
NBC's Curry on What 'Everyone' Knows About Iran
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During an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski (1/25/12), NBC's Today host Ann Curry said this: Well, one of the key topics that we have been hearing a lot about is all of this concern about Iran. You know what's been happening, the concerns, the tensions in the Straits of Hormuz, the concerns about Iran's rise in its efforts, everybody believes, in creating nuclear power–not only nuclear power, but nuclear weapons. Are we headed, in your view, based on all you know, for war with Iran? Of course "everyone" doesn't believe that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. More to the point, no [...]
Jan
17
2012
PBS, NPR Try to Defend Iran Distortions
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Evaluating reporting and commentary about Iran could be reduced to one simple rule: There is no evidence that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon. Statements that suggest otherwise are misleading. Reports that fail to point this out are doing readers/viewers/listeners a disservice. That sounds simple enough. But don't tell that to the outlets that are being criticized over their Iran reporting. Take NPR and PBS, both of which were singled out by the group Just Foreign Policy. A few days ago (1/10/12), the FAIR Blog featured a post criticizing the PBS NewsHour for a deceptive report on Iran. The [...]
Jan
11
2012
At WaPo, Editorial Page Can Make Up Iran Facts
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Last month the group Just Foreign Policy alerted readers to a Washington Post feature that was headlined "Iran's Quest to Possess Nuclear Weapons." The Post changed the headline, and ombud Patrick Pexton weighed in with a column (12/7/11) saying that the IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multiyear effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb. Pexton added that Just Foreign Policy's Robert Naiman "and his Web army were right. The headline and subhead were misleading." [...]
Jan
10
2012
PBS's Dishonest Iran Edit
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As if tensions between the United States and Iran weren't high enough, here's PBS NewsHour anchor Margaret Warner (1/9/12): The Iranian government insists that its nuclear activities are for peaceful energy purposes only, an assertion disputed by the U.S. and its allies. On CBS yesterday, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta repeated international demands that Iran stop enriching uranium. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE LEON PANETTA: But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, do not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us. They need [...]
Jan
06
2012
Action Alert: NYT Misinforms on Iran Crisis
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FAIR's latest Action Alert (1/6/12) urges activists to contact the New York Times about its repeated assertions, contrary to the available evidence, that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Feel free to leave copies of your messages to the Times in the comments thread here, along with any thoughts on the alert.
Dec
21
2011
CBS, Panetta and (Hypothetical) Iranian Nukes
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The Monday broadcast of CBS Evening News (12/19/11) began with big news, with anchor Scott Pelley announcing: The secretary of Defense says tonight that the United States will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. In an interview with CBS News, Leon Panetta says that despite efforts to disrupt their nuclear program, the Iranians have reached a point where they can assemble a bomb in a year or potentially less. To ratchet up the drama, Pelley told viewers that Panetta was aboard "the jet nicknamed the Doomsday Plane. This is the command post where he and the president would [...]
