It's bad enough when a crucial story goes virtually unreported by the major media (see yesterday's entry), but the BBC takes the cake in this story: Tehran jammed by protesters. They provide a list of actions taken by the tyrannical regime to suppress the protests, such as jamming outside radio and TV signals, disabling mobile phone systems, and arresting student leaders. The problem is that the BBC lists them under the subhead "Safety measures," which I'm sure is exactly the way mullahs categorize of them. (The BBC gets credit for even reporting the evening protests, which I could find no mention of in the U.S. media.)
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UPDATE: As of 7:30am CST, the top story from Iran this morning: Bodies of Iranian Twins Arrive in Tehran. I found only one new story about yesterday evening's protests against the Islamists: Iranians again defy govt on riots anniversary. The twin's deaths are tragic, but we're in trouble if the media consider that story more important than the repression of freedom-fighters by an enemy regime.
CNN still has the short story about the early clashes on their front page (along with the twins story). Fox News, however, has reported nothing about the protests. What happened to "We Report, You Decide"?
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UPDATE 2: Here is an excellent article about yesterday by an Iranian student: Our Struggle Continues. Are You Hearing Us?. Excerpt: "Have no doubt: This is the face of President Mohammad Khatami's 'religious democracy.' We are living under a reign of terror and tyrannical censorship. ... To make matters worse, so many of us believe that the regime used the surgery performed on the late Iranian conjoined twins earlier this week to distract the world's attention from the July 9th anniversary. I don't want to speak for them, but I did meet the sisters at the university a few times. They were true Iranians: lovers of freedom, as most young Iranians are these days."
Also read the latest entries at Notes of an Iranian Girl, one of which highlights the censorship of Iranian blogs.
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UPDATE 3: InstaPundit has a good round-up of other limited media coverage of the protest.
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If the media isn't providing appropriate coverage of the Iranian Islamist repression, at least the blogosphere is trying to fill the void.
Jeff Jarvis comments on the difference in coverage between the two and has many other items on his blog, Buzz Machine, including why he thinks July 9 still matters.
A Small Victory listed a number of good links.
Aspragirl wrote about and photographed the anti-mullah demonstrations in NYC (scroll down to a link for more photos).
And Ken Wheaton also has informative links and comments.
Also, Priorities & Frivolities has coverage of the L.A. demonstration.
We continue to hope for freedom in Iran -- for our sake and theirs.
Posted by Forkum at July 10, 2003 12:30 AM
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