{"id":56277,"date":"2015-04-13T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-04-13T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=56277"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:52","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:52","slug":"iranians-are-much-talked-about-on-sunday-morning-tv-but-never-heard-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/04\/iranians-are-much-talked-about-on-sunday-morning-tv-but-never-heard-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranians Are Much Talked About on Sunday Morning TV, but Never Heard From"},"content":{"rendered":"

11 Apr 2015 – <\/em>Sunday morning news television is where Washington sets its media agenda for the week and, more importantly, defines\u00a0its narrow range of conventional, acceptable viewpoints. It\u2019s where the Serious People go to spout their orthodoxies and, through the\u00a0illusion of \u201ctough questioning,\u201d disseminate DC-approved bipartisan narratives. Other than the\u00a0New York Times<\/em> front page, Sunday morning TV was the favorite\u00a0tool of choice for Bush officials and neocon media stars to propagandize the public about Iraq; Dick Cheney\u2019s media aide, Catherine Martin, noted in a memo<\/a> that the Tim-Russert-hosted\u00a0Meet the Press<\/em> lets Cheney \u201ccontrol message,\u201d\u00a0and she testified at the Lewis Libby trial that, as a result, \u201cI suggested we put the vice president on Meet the Press<\/em>, which was a tactic we often used.\u00a0It\u2019s our best format.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the last couple months, the Sunday morning TV shows \u2013\u00a0NBC\u2018s\u00a0Meet the Press<\/em>, CBS\u2019s\u00a0Face The Nation<\/em>, ABC\u2019s\u00a0This Week,\u00a0<\/em>Fox\u2019s\u00a0News Sunday<\/em>, and CNN\u2019s State of the Union<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 have focused on a deal with Iran as one of their principal topics. In doing so, they have repeatedly given a platform to fanatical anti-Iran voices, including Israeli officials\u00a0such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They have sycophantically interviewed officials from the U.S.-supported, anti-Iranian Gulf tyrannies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan; two weeks ago, Chuck Todd interviewed<\/a> Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Adel Al-Jubeir and didn\u2019t utter a word about extreme Saudi repression, but actually did ask this \u201cquestion\u201d:<\/p>\n

\"todd-540x135<\/a>Are the foot rubs we Americans are giving to you to your liking, Mr. Saudi Ambassador, or do you feel that we must make them more vigorous?\u00a0<\/em>In the last three weeks alone<\/a>,\u00a0Meet the Press\u00a0<\/em>has interviewed the Israeli Prime Minister, the Saudi Ambassador, and the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, their\u00a0\u201cexpert media panels\u201d\u00a0almost always feature the most extremist \u201cpro-Israel,\u201d anti-Iran\u00a0American\u00a0pundits such as Jeffrey Goldberg, who played a leading role<\/a> in spreading false claims<\/a> about Iraq under the guise of \u201creporting\u201d (and only became more beloved and credible in DC for it), was dubbed<\/a> Netanyahu\u2019s \u201cfaithful stenographer\u201d by New York Times\u00a0<\/em>columnist Roger Cohen, and even joined the Israeli military<\/a> in his young adulthood.\u00a0In 2014,\u00a0Face the Nation<\/em> interviewed<\/a> Netanyahu five times and featured his \u201cfaithful stenographer,\u201d Goldberg, three times; in 2015<\/a>, the CBS show just last week interviewed Netanyahu and has already hosted Goldberg four times<\/em>. ABC\u2019s This Week with George\u00a0Stephanopoulos <\/em>actually features supreme neocon propagandist Bill Krsitol as a regular \u201cABC News Contributor\u201d\u00a0and has also interviewed Netanyahu. And that\u2019s to say nothing of the \u201chawkish\u201d, AIPAC-loyal and\/or evangelical members of the U.S. Congress who are fanatically devoted to Israel and appear literally almost every week on these programs.<\/p>\n

But as these shows \u201ccover\u201d the Iran deal, one thing is\u00a0glaringly missing: Iranian voices. There has not been a single Iranian official recently interviewed by any of these Sunday morning shows. When I raised this issue on Twitter<\/a> a couple of weeks ago, a Meet the Press<\/em> Senior Editor,\u00a0Shawna Thomas, said the show had \u201cput in a request\u201d with Iran for an interview, while MSNBC\u2019s Chris Hayes also suggested that it can be difficult to secure interviews with Iranian government officials.<\/p>\n

That may be, but even if it is difficult to obtain interviews with Iranian government officials, it is extremely easy to interview Iranian experts, scholars, journalists and other authoritative voices from Tehran. Last week, Democracy Now<\/em>\u2018s Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez hosted<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0fascinating\u00a0hour-long discussion about Iran with Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former nuclear negotiator for Iran\u00a0who was\u00a0Iran\u2019s Ambassador to Germany from 1990 to 1997, and now teaches at Princeton.\u00a0Just this week, CNN International\u2019s\u00a0Christiane Amanpour interviewed<\/a>\u00a0Tehran University Professor\u00a0Sadegh Zibakalam about Tehran\u2019s views and actions\u00a0in the Iran deal. Beyond those in Iran, there are\u00a0Iranian-American\u00a0groups<\/a>\u00a0and Iranian-American experts\u00a0who actually speak Farsi who don\u2019t see the world the way Jeffrey Goldberg and Lindsey Graham do.\u00a0Outside the Sunday shows,\u00a0Iranian officials<\/a> have been interviewed<\/a> occasionally by U.S. media figures.<\/p>\n

In sum, the only way to exclude Iranian voices is if you choose to exclude them. That\u2019s exactly what Sunday morning television programs have done, and continue to do. And it matters a great deal for several reasons.<\/p>\n

For one, excluding the Iranian viewpoint ensures that these shows spew propaganda to the American public. Iran is talked\u00a0about<\/em>, almost always in demonic terms, but is almost never heard\u00a0from<\/em>. That means that these shows, which endlessly boast of their own \u201cobjectivity,\u201d are in fact far more akin to state media.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0Intercept<\/em> colleague, Jon Schwarz, this week wrote an article<\/a> detailing seven historically indisputable facts about what the U.S. has done to Iran \u2013 which\u00a0cause some in that country to chant \u201cDeath to America\u201d \u2013 and it went viral. Why? Because those facts, though quite well established, are virtually never mentioned in\u00a0U.S. media accounts that depict Iran as filled with irrational, primitive, inexplicable hatred for the U.S., designed to show how unstable and blindly hateful they are. That is propaganda by definition: amplifying one side\u2019s views (the U.S. and Israeli governments\u2019) while suppressing others\u2019.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the ease with which those who are rendered invisible are easily demonized. For decades, the key to depicting gay people as mentally ill predators was ensuring they were never heard from, forced to be mute in the closet; once they were out in the open and understood, that demonization became impossible.<\/p>\n

This has also been the favored foreign policy dynamic in the U.S. for decades. When Americans\u00a0are\u00a0killed by a foreign Muslim, we are deluged with information<\/a> about the American victims and their grieving families, while we hear almost nothing about the innocent victims killed by the U.S. or its allies \u2013 not even their names<\/a>. This gross imbalance in coverage creates the illusion that Americans are innocent victims of terrorism but never its perpetrators. Identically, when American journalists are imprisoned by an adversary of the U.S. government, American journalists<\/a> trumpet it endlessly<\/a>, while foreign journalists imprisoned for years with no trial by the U.S. government<\/a> are all but disappeared<\/a>. Silencing The Other Side is a key U.S. media propaganda tactic.<\/p>\n

There are all sorts of dubious claims presented about Iran, the U.S. and Israel that are treated as unchallenged truth in U.S. media discourse. The range of \u201cdebate\u201d allowed by the U.S. media \u2013 is Obama\u2019s\u00a0deal with Iran a good idea or not? \u2013 all assumes those dubious claims about Iran to be true. But those claims are vehemently disputed in large parts of the world, certainly in Tehran. But Americans, especially the millions\u00a0who get their news from Sunday morning television or from outlets whose agenda is shaped by those programs, literally have no idea about any of that, because the people who can best advocate those views \u2013 i.e. Iranians \u2013 are simply never heard from.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s remarkably telling that the only voices heard on Sunday morning TV shows are those who spout the U.S. Government line about Iran, including officials from the repressive regimes\u00a0most closely allied with the U.S. Obviously, one can find the arguments of Iranians unpersuasive or even harbor hostility to that nation\u2019s government, but what possible justification is there for the leading Sunday morning news shows in the U.S. to simply suppress those views altogether?<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Murtaza Hussain.<\/em><\/p>\n

Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The only way to exclude Iranian voices is if you choose to exclude them. That\u2019s exactly what Sunday morning television programs have done, and the result is pure propaganda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}