Every day there’s a scare story coming out of Iran. A couple days ago, it was announced that a western news correspondent, Roxana Saberi, has been detained in Iran. Can they do that? Apparently Iran isn’t a free country like the USA.
Except-
Except that in the USA, too, reporters for foreign news services are required to have press credentials. Saberi has been reporting in Iran for six years, although a year ago her press credentials were not renewed. Maybe because she was doing work for NPR and Fox. Could those be considered propaganda branches of the US State Department? Not only as mouthpieces for the US military, but agents of a belligerent power at that. If the US has called Iran part of the Axis of Evil, where does that leave our identity in Tehran’s eyes?
Even if the well-spoken former Miss America contender was relaying heartwarming stories, in the hands of Fox News or NPR, no doubt it doesn’t come out that way.
When the US finds foreigners reporting to Cuba, for example, without press credentials, they incarcerate them. For years.
So let’s be fair, Saberi is not even being labeled by Iran as a foreign agent. And though she did overstay her permit, she wasn’t being deported.
What got Saberi arrested was buying a bottle of wine, which is illegal in iran. Try to buy an illegal controlled substance in America and then cry about how authorities seem to be picking on you.
4/18 UPDATE!
Ms. Saberi has been sentenced to eight years for spying. American Media take heed. Some people are prepared to call you on your so-called Fifth-Estate objectivity. If it talks like a propagandist, even if it walks like an innocuous beauty pageant contestant, it’s an agent of the state. In this case, a world bully with Barack Obama’s smile painted across its grill.
If you had deleted the four paragraphs before the final one, you would have made a simple and uncontroversial point. An arrest for buying alcohol in a place where it is illegal to buy alcohol does sound apolitical and diplomatically harmless. Sure, it also make Iran look uptight, but no more so than Utah.
The notion that NPR and Fox could be considered “propaganda branches of the US State Department,” “mouthpieces for the US military,” and
“agents of a belligerent power,” however, make you sound like a ranting crazy instead. Secretary Gates, Secretary Clinton and President Obama would have much easier lives if this were true, or even remotely connected to the truth, but it is not.
NPR may receive some government funding, but it is no Voice of America, or Armed Forces Radio (which are admittedly U.S. propoganda arms).
Fox may have corporate offices and shareholders in the U.S., but Rupert Murdock, who controls the network, isn’t (or at least wasn’t until very recently) a U.S. citizen, and Fox is one of the more vehement opponents of the current political regime of the U.S. in the traditional media.
Why is that so in your opinion, ohwilleke? NPR and Fox run ‘American Empire is Great’ propaganda almost non-stop daily, do echo support for US government policies in almost all their broadcasts, and are agents of a belligerent power from the Iranian government POV. Saying that that is so is hardly a rant but a statement of simple truth. I find both channels o be utterly nauseating US propaganda fountains myself.
Just because Fox might have its disagreements with nuances of foreign policy with Obama doesn’t mean a thing from the POV of the Empire’s potential victims. And NPR is almost like a Gay Right Wing Democratic Party voter’s version of Voice of America most of the time. Give’s me the chills just listening to the sound of the overly ‘faggy’ voices of the announcers for the program, let alone paying actual attention to the content of the insular/insulated propaganda when I inadvertently hear it on KRCC. To me, NPR is even more disgusting a propaganda vehicle for American imperial government than Fox, since it is so much more pretentious in its own sickening manner. The pretentiousness comes from a different style than does say O’Reilly’s or any other of Murdoch’s house twits, but so? The assumptions that we are living in the pinnacle of Greatness here in the USA are exactly the same.
I tried, you know, looking up the number of Americans in Iranian custody compared to the number of Iranian Citizens in American Custody, but a lot of the Iranians-in-Torture-Centers are being held without identification for “Homeland Security” purposes.
And of course The Pentagon and Homeland Security would Never Ever lie to us about such things.
And if the Real Axis of Evil (Washington-London-Bill O’Reilly) weren’t playing the whole notion as a “Hostage Situation” we wouldn’t have the opportunity to snipe at them so conveniently handed to us.
Oh, and finding the number of Americans KILLED by Iran has proven to be a futile search.
Also the list of nations Invaded by Iran over the past three decades, as opposed to Britain, with the Falkland War, once, every Green Neighborhood in northern Ireland, repeatedly…
The U.S. with Grenada, once, Venezuela on a continuing basis, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, now Northern Mexico, again, on a Continuing Basis (Proxy Thug “armies” on the order of the Contras count, because from the point of view of somebody who is being kidnapped and or killed by people who are being paid by Washington, it IS an American attack)
Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia….
Of course “our” Proxy Army the IDF, Lebanon twice, Gaza, and the rest of Palestinian territories every time the whim strikes them, usually at a time coinciding with their Elections.
The last time the Iranians were mixing it up with their neighbors was … let me see..
Oh, yes… when the Reagan Regime was arming both Iran AND Iraq, essentially financing both sides of their war.
Oh Willeke!
Take your pick of litmus tests for corporate-media complicity with US policy (obviously favoring one administration over another offers little differentiation).
Okay, here goes: have they offered any critical analysis of: War of Aggression? Torture? Rendition? Illegal Detainment? US support of Israeli racism?
Do they not say the “so called” War on Terror, or “so called” Clean Coal and yet do “ask” is there Global Warming? or is Water-boarding torture?
If a news service is not questioning why the US can’t have single-payer Universal Health Care, or can’t join the International Criminal Court, or can’t cut off the bankers; they are plainly PR shills for Wall Street, Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Oil and the military industry.
I’m have a band (7th Wave) and would like to get some “Free Roxana” t-shirts to promote this. Any idea where to get some. I’d like to raise awareness about this at our shows by wearing it and supporting her.
HELP PLEASE!!! thx alot.
She was sentenced as a spy. Are you gotten any smarter.
If not, it is too late for you/