The New York Times and the Iranian election

[Hannah Bell]

The response of the US media to the Iranian election says more about the state of democracy and the so-called “free press” in America than it does about the state of democratic rights in Iran.

...No sooner had Iranian authorities announced late Friday, US time, that Ahmadinejad had defeated Mousavi by a 30 percent margin than the Times and virtually the entire media proclaimed the election a fraud. The (NY) Times did not simply report the allegations by Mousavi that the election had been stolen, it embraced them wholeheartedly and uncritically.


It did so without undertaking any independent investigation. It brought forward no serious facts to substantiate the claim. Rather, it relied on allegations made by Mousavi and his supporters.

...On what mass base could Mousavi depend for a successful bid to unseat Ahmadinejad? The candidate of the Iranian liberal establishment, he campaigned as no less an ardent defender of Islamist clerical rule than Ahmadinejad. On domestic policy, he vaguely called for more openness, while opposing Ahmadinejad’s “populist” subsidies to the urban poor and the peasantry.

The media has not sought to explain why the mass of the Iranian people should be expected to support an advocate of the same free market policies that have produced a social disaster throughout the world. Mousavi’s most prominent backer, moreover, was Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a leading figure in the state apparatus and one of the country’s wealthiest men. Rafsanjani, notorious for his corruption, is despised by Iranian workers and the poor.

Mousavi’s actual electoral base did not extend beyond better-off-sections of the urban middle class, university students and businessmen.

There is another issue. What standing do the New York Times and the US media as a whole have to lecture Iran about democratic elections?

The Times accepted the theft of the 2000 US presidential election without a whimper. That was a presidential coup, and it was carried out in broad daylight, with Bush and the Republicans suppressing votes and the Supreme Court halting a recount in Florida that would have given the election to Al Gore, who had won the popular vote nationally. One need only recall the extraordinary events of election night 2000, when the networks suddenly reversed their call for Gore in Florida and declared the pivotal state for Bush...

The filthy role of the Times in seeking to discredit the Iranian election epitomizes the corruption of the American media and its integration into the state. The mass media serve ever more openly as instruments for the manipulation of public opinion in the interest of state concerns.

In this article, as in the articles published on the Iranian election, there is a large element of provocation. Such “news” items are written on assignment from US intelligence agencies. This corruption of the media is itself a critical expression of, and factor in, the advanced decay of American democracy...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j15.shtml

[CreekDog]

1. So you accept this uncritically and criticize NY Times for accepting their reports uncritically

you are a smart person right? :shrug:

and the NY Times is not the only organization questioning the elections, around the world this is happening.

[JI7]

2. look at what the source is

[ProgressIn2008]

15. What's wrong with WSWS? I find many interesting articles there. Twitter is okay

but not WSWS?

[cali]

37. it's much like worldnutdaily. It has an agenda to push in a way that makes

the NYT look like its pure and impartial.

[anonymous171]

3. lol State Socialist, State Capitalist

It's all the same really.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

4. The author of the above WSWS piece has a learning disability.

[Kurska]

5. They didn't even open up the ballot boxes, there are photos of them being BURNED to prevent a count

This was stolen, period, it was voter manipulation, they just made the numbers up.

[Hannah Bell]

6. glad to hear from all the usual suspects. too bad the comments

ring so hollow, cause the NYT supported the bush coup.

[Kurska]

7. Bush coup? Bush is sitting at a ranch in crawford, what the hell does bush have to do with this?

[leftstreet]

8. The point was The Times can't be trusted and has no business pointing fingers

But then you know that

[JI7]

10. how about Al Jazeera or Al Arabya ?

[leftstreet]

12. Did they support the Bush coup?

You lost me

:shrug:

[TBF]

61. Bush isn't sitting in a ranch in Crawford, he's in his new Highland Park Mansion. n/t

[billyoc]

47. You should be used to this reactionary horseshit from the bomber libs.

How many here at DU have called for bombing Iran's nuclear facilities since this election?

[CreekDog]

49. Hannah, there is no actual reporting the article you posted

and you seem to be in 100% agreement with it, which makes me wonder about your lack of critical thinking.

[Hannah Bell]

53. you decided i was 100% in agreement - how?

i posted two articles on iran from wsws. They had different takes on the probability of fraud, one believing the results were legit, the other not.

How did you decide I'm in 100% agreement with this one - or either?

Your special telepathy.

[CreekDog]

54. because you defended the election results in subsequent posts

and secondly you posted this "column" (not article) without comment.

why on earth should anyone believe what you post? you suggest we should be skeptical of our media and its reports then you post stuff that has even less evidence of being accurate and expect us to believe that?

:wtf:

you clearly are unable to digest and logically think through conflicting and contradictory reports to see what is consistent among them. instead all this blather to throw it all away because of some conspiracy that is more unproven than what you say is unproven here.

[Hannah Bell]

59. where's that? link to me defending the results?

[DFW]

9. The "World Socialist Web Society?"

Why would such an organization celebrate that the Iranian people overthrew the Shah in 1979,
but claim that they suddenly have no inclination to overthrow an equally dictatorial regime
thirty years later?

After fifty years of undemocratic regimes calling themselves "socialist republics" of one kind
or another, you'd think that a socialist site would know when an Islamic "republic" had ceased
to be so. If they can accurately recognize the American election of 2000 as stolen, why should they
blindly accept such a blatantly skewed result as the one just reported from Tehran?

[Hannah Bell]

13. what are you on about? not the article, since it says nothing like what's in your post.

[DFW]

30. It's what it implies (to me, anyway)

That because our media blew in it 2000, that they couldn't have gotten it right about this election.

Except for official Ahmadinejad regime reporting, I don't see a lot of worldwide support for their
version of how the election went down, and if their repression of domestic protests and suppression
of foreign media going in or out are any indication, they don't expect much, either.

[scarletwoman]

16. The piece is a judgement on OUR media, not on the Iranian government.

It does rightly point out that Ahmedinejad had a larger "base" among the electorate than did Mousavi. That's just the facts.

sw

[scarletwoman]

11. Thank you. I always enjoy the incisive analysis that the wsws publishes.

And people still jump to defend the NYT after all the evidence that's been pointed out time and again that it's the house organ for the ongoing U.S. imperial project and the preservation of the Corporate National Security State.

sw

[Kurska]

14. U.S Imperial project? Coporate national security state? Do you have any idea how foolish you sound?

[scarletwoman]

17. No. Why don't you tell me?

[DCKit]

34. Foolish woman. Everyone knows the NYT is *the* pinnacle of responsible journalism.

Even if such things as you mentioned existed in the (Rah! Rah!) U.S.A., the NYT would never support them by hiring writers like Judy and Bill as cheerleaders for an illegitimate pResidency or printing Op-Eds from the very engineers of the atrocities of which you speak. I have it on excellent authority ("Some People", "A Spokesman" and "An Anonymous Source") that the NYT's journalistic integrity is not only intact, it's thriving. It's just hard to discern in these difficult times and with all that noise coming from the librul left.

O.K., maybe they're a little off their game, but that shouldn't count. The NYT is still almost as reliable as the Enquirer and only a tad more insane than "Jerry Springer Uncensored", so it's all good.

[leftstreet]

18. "All truth goes through three stages:

First, it is ridiculed. Then, it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident.”

[ProgressIn2008]

19. You don't think we have a corporate national security state?

[anonymous171]

20. Actually it's just a Corporate State. The Police/Military control piece comes with the territory

How else can the rich protect their assets?

[girl gone mad]

33. Maybe stick around a few more years and things will become a little clearer..

for you.

[Enthusiast]

35. What justification is there for

the U.S. outspending the entire world on its military? Corporate national security state sounds very reasonable to me.

[glitch]

48. Likewise. nt

[Ignis]

55. Just like that commie pinko Eisenhower!

Damn him and his talk of the Military-Industrial Complex!

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

23. Is this satire? n/t

[Kurska]

25. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad n/t

[Hannah Bell]

27. no. are you satire?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

28. If I were going to engage in some satire...

...it would be a hell of a lot better than this shite.

[Hannah Bell]

29. you say you're shiite?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

32. Is this third grade?

Do you need a time-out in the corner?

[thewiseguy]

21. Absolutely bullshit

"Mousavi’s actual electoral base did not extend beyond better-off-sections of the urban middle class, university students and businessmen."

This is the type of article you would expect to read from an Iranian government affiliated website.

[anonymous171]

22. Unfortuntely, reactionary socialism did not die with the Soviet Union,.

[thewiseguy]

24. It drives me crazy to see people who have absolutely no clue about Iran

Making these threads.

This is the type of crap you would read on a pro Ahmadinejad website.

I did not need NYT to tell me that they stole the elections in Iran. I freaking went ahead and voted and our voting place closed after they were going to announce the final results.

[Hannah Bell]

26. neither did red-baiting. or non-substantive ad hom. unfortunately.

[DURHAM D]

31. Ahh come on Hannah -

you are messin' with simplicity. Everyone here prefers a black and white world as dictated by the msm and American blogs.

[cali]

39. lol. the OP's pov is hardly sophisticated and nuanced. WSW is the worldnutdaily of the left.

[Hannah Bell]

43. difference: wsws is fact-based. wnd = joe the plumber.

[CreekDog]

51. where are the facts or reporting in that "article" from wsws?

you haven't been answering me so i doubt you can defend their statements effectively.

by the way, that the NY Times has done sucky things multiple times does not mean that the Iranians held a fair and transparent election --there is no evidence they did.

but because you don't like the NY Times you are here defending the Iranian election.

and you think we are tools? :eyes:

[Douglas Carpenter]

36. the Middle Eastern media is pretty much saying the same thing as is almost everyone else

It would be hard to find more than just a very few of the strongest critics of American policy in the region who do not agree that the election was, at the very least riddled with fraud.

I've had Al Jazeera on constantly and they seem to think it probably was. I don't think that a news service that was twice bombed by the U.S. Air Force in two different wars are likely part of a conspiracy to spread anti-Iranian disinformation.

Actually there is almost unanimity among even the strongest critics of American policy that the election was most likely stolen or at the very least riddled with enormous fraud.

With only a few rare exceptions even the strongest critics of American policy in the Middle East are convinced this was a stolen election. What concerns some progressives most is that this stolen election will be used by the neocons and other reactionaries for retching up the rhetoric toward a military strike on Iran.

Absolutely nothing would harm the pro-democracy and pro-reform forces in Iran more than and play into the hands of the theocratic hardliners more than the appearance that the pro-democracy, pro-reform movement are stooges for the United States.

There was a good article today on Alternet by Steven Zunes. Also Juan Cole who strongly argued against and exposed the dishonest media propaganda that claimed that Ahmadinejad advocated launching a nuclear attack against Israel. Still Dr. Cole has come out very clearly in two different articles laying out the case that the election was likely stolen. Professor Cole has lived and studied in Iran and is fluent in Farsi and is an Iranian expert and a strong supporter of America establishing friendly relations with Iran.

[cali]

38. I find your unquestioning devotion and loyalty to wsw touching.

[Hannah Bell]

42. just throw it into the mix as counterweight to the cadres here.

[Douglas Carpenter]

40. World Socialist Web Society run by the Fourth International - a Trotskyist / Communist organization

Committed to the cause of world Trotskyist style Communism.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is a Trotskyist international. Its affiliated parties are called the Socialist Equality Party and have sections and supporters in 6 countries. It is well known for its publication of the World Socialist Web Site, with content in 13 different languages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Committee_of_the_Fourth_International

I would not rely exclusively on the New York Times either. My routine news sources happen to include a great deal of Middle Eastern media who seem to pretty much all agree that at the very least the election was riddled with massive fraud and probably stolen.

But, sometimes one should understand where certain sources are coming from.

[Hannah Bell]

41. some is coming from the qatar & saudi royals, biggest owners of "middle eastern" media.

everyone's got their biases. i don't believe the spin of middle eastern royals superior to anyone else's.

wsws's are up front, not disguised.

in fact, it's widely rumored the trots are a front group designed to siphon off real dissent.

nevertheless, in their role as phoney opposition, wsws delivers mostly fact-base reporting based on msm sources & local informants & analysis from an anti-capital pov, with an obligatory "we must build the rev" at the end.

i can discount their spin for the rest.

[Douglas Carpenter]

44. and where are there facts? as regards to the NYT, I have no reason to defend their work

but the evidence is overwhelming that massive voter fraud did occur in Iran. If this is some kind of CIA disinformation ops, where are the facts to support that.

Why is it that almost all the strongest critics of American foreign policy in the Middle East agree that the election was riddled with fraud and quite likely stolen. These are not CIA stooges. These are people committed to closer relations between Iran and the U.S. and strong opponents of American Middle East policy

Imagine Barack Obama loosing the African-American vote to John McCain in Chicago. Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province. The reported results from Iran show Moussavi being trounced by Ahmadinejad among Azeri voters in Tabriz, the capital of Azerbaijan province. Azeri's almost always vote for one of their own even when the candidate has absolutely no chance of winning.

Voting trends all across Iran are absolutely implausible and everyone knows this.

Surely a rational person must agree that the whole thing smells fishy.

Ahmadinejad reelected under cloud of fraud

By Juan Cole

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/13/iran /

"Obama administration officials were privately casting doubt on the announced vote tallies. They pointed out that it was unlikely that Ahmadinejad had defeated his chief opponent, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, by a margin of 57 percent, in Moussavi's own home city of Tabriz. Nor is it plausible, as claimed, that Ahmadinejad won a majority of votes in the capital, Tehran, from which he hails. The final tally also gave only 320,000 votes to the other reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, who had helped force Ahmadinejad into a runoff election when he ran in 2005. It seems odd that he get less than 1 percent of the votes in this round. Karoubi, an ethnic Lur from Iran's west, was even alleged to have done poorly in those provinces.

The final vote counts alleged for cities and provinces, even more so than the landslide claimed by the incumbent nationally, strongly suggest a last-minute and clumsy fraud. A carefully planned theft of the election would at least have conceded Tabriz to Moussavi and the rural western Iranian villages to Karoubi."


snip: "The primary challenger to incumbent Ahmadinejad, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Moussavi, was widely thought to have a number of crucial constituencies behind him. Urban youth and women, who had elected a reformist president in 1997 and 2001, showed enthusiasm for Moussavi. He also showed an ability to bring out big crowds in his native Azerbaijan, where a Turkic language, Azeri, is spoken rather than Persian. (Azeris constitute about a third of the Iranian population.) It was expected that if the turnout was large, that would help Moussavi.

But not only did Iran's Electoral Commission announce that Ahmadinejad had won almost two-thirds of the general vote, it also gave him big majorities in major cities such as Tehran and Tabriz (the latter is the capital of Azerbaijan). These results seemed unbelievable not only to Moussavi supporters but to many professional Iran observers."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/13/iran /

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Stealing the Iranian Election
by Juan Cole

Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen

1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.

2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers.

3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.

link to full article:

http://juancole.com/2009/06/stealing-iranian-election.html

Has the Election Been Stolen in Iran

If it is true that Ahmadinejad's victory is fraudulent, it'll be a dream come true for those pushing a more confrontational approach with Iran.

By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet. Posted June 13, 2009.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

http://www.alternet.org/world/140626/has_the_election_been_stolen_in_iran/?page=1

So overwhelming were the signs of imminent Ahmadinejad defeat and so massive was the margin of his alleged victory, the only reasonable assumption was that there has been fraud on a massive scale. What polls did exist showed Mousavi leading by a clear majority and Ahmadinejad well under 40%, a margin roughly similar to what most analysts had suggested based on anecdotal evidence. Instead, the official results show Ahmadinejad winning by an overwhelming 63% of the vote. "

snip: "There are also more direct indications of fraud.

In past elections, there have been substantial variations in the vote of various candidates based on ethnicity and geography, but the official results show Ahmadinejad’s vote totals being relatively uniform across the country. Mousavi, an Azeri from the province of Azerbaijan who has been quite popular there, did poorly, according to official results. This is particularly striking since even minor candidates from that area had done disproportionately well in previous elections. Similarly, Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate and an ethnic Lur, supposedly fared poorly in his home province of Luristan. Nationally, Karoubi went from 17% in the 2005 election to less than 1% this year with no apparent reason for such a precipitous decline. Meanwhile, the much-despised Mohsen Rezaie, the other hardline candidate, allegedly got twice as many votes."

snip: "The stealing of the Iranian presidential elections is a dream come true for American neo-conservatives and others pushing for a more confrontational approach with Iran. It is imperative that we not allow the hard-liners of either country an illegitimate victory and give our support to Iranian democrats in their struggle to reclaim their country."

[Hannah Bell]

45. 1) The "evidence" in the stories = "we don't think it's likely." Maybe,

maybe not, but it's not hard evidence. Evidence = voters being turned away, intimidated, dumped ballots, altered ballots, etc.

2) The opposition, & the international community, has the option of asking for a recount, with monitors. So far as I've heard, this hasn't happened.

3) In any event, the vote is non-binding (I've read). If the supreme leader doesn't like the "official" results, he doesn't have to honor them. So far as I've read, he suggested he liked them. Or rather, that god liked them.

4) I posted two articles from wsws on iran's elections. The author of the one on the nyt seemed to find the results believable. The author of the other seemed to believe they were not.

Supporting facts were included in both articles. Whether or not the elections were fraudulent is of less interest to me than the domestic & geopolitics involved. That's why I find the wsws coverage more valuable than twitters & much msm coverage: wsws attempts to analyze such things, & their writers don't always come to the same conclusions.

Except, of course, that we must all join the trots to build the world rev. :>)

[CreekDog]

50. My goodness, you are totally in the tank! Opposition has not asked for recount?

what of the monitors in the original election -oh yeah, there were none!

from now on, based on this post and taking all the talking points of the Iranian regime, I now think you are a representative of them --like those people who came here to post against the Tibetans last year.

ALSO, because you are upset at us for questioning the Iranian election ON THE BASIS that our own 2000 election was stolen/flawed/etc. but are now defending their election (with far less basis by the way) -you are either unable to think or you are a fool.

it is a waste of time to even listen to you as your logic is nonexistent or goes in circles.

:rant:

[JackRiddler]

60. Okay, but then you have to relate that to the article.

New York Times is owned by people with an ideological interest, too.

Go ahead and question the source, but remember, this is an analysis, not a reportage. You still have to address the argument itself, which can still be right regardless of your view of the source's ideology.

Was Marx's reporting from France during and after the 1848 revolution invalid because he's Marx?

[HamdenRice]

46. So komred, Eez correct political line for today zat Ahmadinejad won and only political hooligans ...

and anti-social elements are engaging in counter-revolutionary acts of vandalism in streets of Tehran? Eez correct line that only running dogs of capitalism geeve credence to sloganeering of anti-social elements that election was stolen?

Zank you komred for korrect political line! Will spread through great patriotic propaganda organs of zee peeple!

[Hannah Bell]

52. I posted two articles from wsws. One writer seems to think Ahmadinejad won.

The other seems to think he didn't.

Which is more variety than I've seen in the US/intenational corp media.

[DireStrike]

56. This article makes a great point. Most of us are almost totally ignorant on the issue.

You can attack the messenger if you like. One thing the wsws article got right is that a great majority of have no idea why we are so sure Ah-my-dinner's-cold stole the election, or why we've become de facto supporters of the opposition.

[WHAT]

57. I'm glad you wrote this...

I have no trust in what is presented in the nyt or here. I remember when the clamor on du was relegated to the election reform group and had its teeth pulled.

I recognize surliness as a "tell" of false conviction because of the underpinning of entitlement.

I have to read the responses now.

[Odin2005]

58. I should care what the Trotskyite morans think WHY?

"Mousavi’s actual electoral base did not extend beyond better-off-sections of the urban middle class, university students and businessmen.

What a load of BS. Typical Marxist trying to force the situation into his dogmatic box by basically saying that Mousavi is the "bourgeoisie" candidate and nothing more. :eyes: