16 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
The protests in Iran have been seen by many as conclusively proving the value of the Internet in organising and reporting civil movements.
Perhaps the tech-savviness is the only unsurprising element of the events of the past few days. Despite restrictions, Iran’s youth are remarkably active on the web, with Farsi the fourth most prevalant language in the blogosphere. As was pointed out at Internet Sans Frontieres:
“In 1979 revolutionary songs started to fill the streets of Tehran while the Shah was boarding the plane that brought him out of the country. Today the web is spreading and amplifying the news of the ongoing protests at last week’s election results.
In Iran there are more than six million web users, the majority of whom are under 25.”
Particular attention has been paid to the events on Twitter, with thousands around the world following #IranElection.
At friendfeed.com, you can view an aggregation of all related tweets coming out of Iran.
Citizen photojournalism hub Demotix is hosting pictures from its contributors in Iran here.
As foreign media have now been severely restricted (the BBC having already experienced jamming since Friday afternoon), these citizen sources may be the only way to find out what’s happening.
15 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
In rare footage from a year ago, President Ahmadinejad can be seen giving an open-air speech on the outskirts of Tehran. An official film crew, from the president’s office, has a monopoly filming presidential duties. As the camera panned from Ahmadinejad to the audience, it revealed an endless sea of people, seemingly hanging on his every word. It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. There were men and women in attendance, but the crowd of literally thousands was segregated by gender.
The footage had been obtained by documentary filmmaker and Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari for a documentary he was making about Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad has always safeguarded the country’s hard-line tradition. When he was mayor of Tehran, he proposed burying a martyr from the Iran-Iraq war in every city square to remind Iranians of the eternal threat against their country and religion.
(more…)
15 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
Though the Iranian authorities seem determined to keep a grip on information getting in and out of the country following the weekend’s dubious election victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they have failed to shut down Twitter. You can follow what’s happening around in Iran and reaction from around the world at #IranElection, #Mousavi and #Tehran. The Tweeter persiankiwi is providing regular updates from Tehran.
Richard Sambrook has a good analysis of Twitter “coverage” of the events here.
Meanwhile, you can read an account of conditions for those detained by riot police in Tehran here. It’s written by George McLeod, a reporter for Canada’s Globe and Mail, who was taken in by police last night.
And the BBC has a good round up of the clampdown here
15 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Jon Sawyer, Executive Director of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
On Saturday, Iranian officials contacted television journalists for The Associated Press in Iran and warned that the government would enforce an existing law banning provision of news video to the Farsi-language services of the BBC and the Voice of America. Both agencies broadcast to Iranians via satellite in their own language.
AP employees then contacted the BBC and VOA to discuss the order.
”It is the AP practice to comply with local laws regarding media. We are nonetheless determined to continue to provide accurate coverage of events in Iran,” said AP’s Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll.
There were a variety of other clamp-down steps affecting both international and domestic news organizations. For instance, officials telephoned several visiting international journalists with visas to cover the elections and told them that their visas would not be extended after the vote, a courtesy often offered in the past.
Two other international news agencies that operate in Iran, Reuters and Agence France-Press, could not be immediately reached for comment. Neither reported any restrictions on their journalists.
A spokesman for the Swedish network SVT, Geronimo Akerlund, said its reporter, Lena Pettersson, had been asked to ”leave Iran as soon as possible because the elections are over.”
Dubai-based news network Al Arabiya said the station’s correspondent in Tehran was given a verbal order from Iranian authorities that its office would be closed for one week, said Executive News Editor Nabil Khatib. No reason was given, but the station was warned several times Saturday that it needed to be careful in reporting ”chaos” accurately, he said.
German television network ZDF said Sunday on air that its reporter in Iran and other reporters were being ”prevented from doing their jobs in a massive form”. The network said it was unable to show a broadcast feed from the network’s correspondent depicting protests.
Italian state TV RAI said one of its crews was caught in a street clash. An Iranian interpreter was beaten with clubs by riot police and officers confiscated the cameraman’s videotapes, the station said.
Iran regulates and monitors the activities of international and independent media operating within its borders, and it closely watches and guides its own internal state media. Many reformist newspapers, magazines and websites have emerged in the past decade, but often come under restrictions or are shut down.
International media normally are allowed to work without censorship in Iran, subject to certain rules, such as seeking advance permission to travel to certain locations outside the capital or to interview government officials.
But Iran is more sensitive about news reports or blogs and Internet communications in Farsi, apparently concerned about the effect on its internal political situation.
