The Consequences of World Media's Silence

Potkin Azarmehr, Iran va Jahan:

Although the vote rigging allegations in the first round of the elections in Iran are the most blatant and even Islamic Republic insiders with impeccable establishment credentials are protesting about it, the world media is silent. The foreign correspondents are just repeating the results as announced by the Guardian Council.

Giving the impression to the world that this was a fair and free election and the population participated in this farce overwhelmingly.

Two results were announced after the elections. The interior ministry who should have announced the election results, announced Ahmadi-Nejad’s votes as 3,449,697.

Yet the Guardian Council which should have no part in announcing the results, declared Ahmadi-Nejad as the second candidate with almost one million votes extra.

Where did the extra one million votes suddenly come from?

In a controversial letter to the Supreme Leader, published on various sites and dailies in Iran but later withdrawn, Karrubi resigned from all his government posts and accused the Supreme Leader’s son for manipulating the election results. Suddenly Karrubi, the long term veteran of the Islamic Republic, the man who could be relied on to be the peace maker between the different factions in the Islamic Republic, felt so outraged by the audacity of the vote rigging that he joined the opposition to the Islamic Republic!

The foreign media however, have not reported any of this. They have just simply regurgitated the Guardian Council figures. BBC’s John Simpson, a self proclaimed expert on Iran, in his typical school boy “analysis”, paraphrased the usual, “Rafsanjani the moderate facing the hardliner in the second round ….”

What will be the consequences of such reporting?

The Muslim youth in Europe hear about election fraud in America, and a successful, flawless election in the Islamic Republic. The Muslim youth in Europe will hear the mistreatment of the prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghorrayb prisons, but they never hear the mistreatment of political prisoners and ordinary public in the Islamic Iran. I can go on with such comparisons.

In short however, the idea of the Islamic government being some sort of Utopia and the Western democracy a flawed and degenerate system will be further engrained into the minds of the Musilm youth in Europe.READ MORE


The Muslim youth will be more confident and more resolute than before.

These spineless politicians and media will help the West to lose the ideological battle ground. Once that is lost, all else will crumble too. For no force will ever be powerful enough to take on the growing fundamentalism amongst the determined and dedicated Muslim youth who are prepared to die for what the Western media led them to believe to be a Utopia.

So much for the West’s war on terrorism.

The blogosphere can demand that the media ask the hard questions raised here. Will the blogosphere remanin silent as well?