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An Open Letter to the Western Press
By IHRV | May 13, 2009
It seems obvious that Roxana Saberi’s release was the result of international pressure, aided by the ongoing coverage of her story in the west by influential media outlets such as the New York Times and the BBC. This is a commendable thing. A commendable thing which has done absolutely nothing to help the hundreds, thousands, of journalists, teachers, students, and activists currently imprisoned throughout Iran.
The world has cause to celebrate with Ms. Saberi and her family, as it has cause to celebrate every time a good person is spared an unjust fate. But why should Ms. Saberi’s case stand alone on the front pages of foreign papers? Her bravery in returning to Iran, as both an American and a journalist under an administration which tolerates neither, was remarkable, newsworthy, and no different from the bravery of the masses of Iranian protestors who would choose jail, even torture, over silence and fear.
We all know why the Times, and President Obama, leapt so quickly to her cause. A pocket-sized, blue-covered document—a few pieces of paper stitched together, and the embossed logo of the United States. This small fact of her American citizenship, western media implies, makes her somehow more worthy of our attention.
It is all well and good for the U.S. to look out for its own, adopted or otherwise. It is not good, it is not acceptable, for the so-called “free press” to treat Ms. Saberi’s case as exceptional, when it was really merely another file in a docket aimed at the repression, the outright destruction, of the opposition in Iran. It is pragmatic, if not honorable, for U.S. politicians to aim for the release of a single reporter from Evin Prison. It is revolting, that the press should shy away from this opportunity to expose the modus operandi currently perverting the judicial system in Iran.
Fine, if the press smells a diplomatic incident in the making, and wants to cover it. It sells papers. Not fine, to ignore the roots of the case, and to give millions of readers the false impression that Ms. Saberi’s arrest is something out of the ordinary. Unacceptable, for the press to mislead us into the assumption that this one woman is the only courageous person, the only voice of dissent, who has been targeted in Iran. For the western press to even remotely suggest, even by omission, that the people of Iran are not actively fighting this vicious regime is an abdication of journalistic integrity, and a betrayal of their peers, those brave thousands who labor, who are imprisoned, who are tortured and who are murdered every day in Iran so that the truth may be known.
When Ms. Saberi returns to the United States, she will no doubt be the subject of a week’s worth of interviews, before the press moves on to some other, more current event. In that one week it will be her job, and her honor, to bring to the western public the portraits of those soldiers, the better Iranian army, now rotting alone in the dark.
Topics: analysis |