Rene — When Iranian American Media Shout, Iran Listens
Topic(s): Iran | Comments Off on Rene — When Iranian American Media Shout, Iran ListensWhen Iranian American Media Shout, Iran Listens
News Feature, Sandip Roy,
Pacific News Service, Jun 19, 2003
Editor’s Note: Members of Iranian American media, accused of
fomenting recent unrest in Iran, say they’re no stooges of the
U.S. government. But most agree that, with the help of technology
like the Internet, the Iranian community in America is affecting
policy in its home country.
Hossein Hedjazi, host of Radio Iran in Los Angeles, risked being called
“un-American” for criticizing the government after it detained hundreds
of Iranian immigrants as they registered with U.S. authorities last
December. But Iranian American media like his are now being called
a tool of the same American government, because of the way they are
covering the student protests rocking Iran.
“We’ve always been called the agent of the Islamic republic — now
they are calling us agents of the CIA,” says Hedjazi. Even if that
charge is overblown, the community may now actually be shaping events
back in Iran instead of just covering them.
“The role (U.S.-based Iranian media) have played in the recent uprising
has been phenomenal,” says Hedjazi. “Those people back home have no
way to know what’s going on. But the minute the stations go on air and
say go to this street at this time, the people follow the guidelines.”
“Technology fostered all this — the Web, Internet radio, satellite
television,” says Mehdi Zokaei, publisher and editor of Javanan
International Weekly. “None of this would have been possible five
or 10 years ago.” Zokaei moved the paper to Los Angeles after the
Islamic Revolution made it impossible to publish in Iran. The largest
concentration of Iranians outside of Iran live in Southern California.
Thanks to the Internet, papers such as Javanan can be read in
Iran. Zokaei says the Tehran government is “scared, not just of the
Americans, but of the proliferation of Iranian Americans.”
Zia Atabay, a former Iranian pop star, and his Los Angeles satellite
channel National Iranian Television (NITV) may be Public Enemy No. 1 in
Iran. “The Iranian government is spending millions of dollars buying
equipment to jam my signal,” Atabay says. But he also says Iranians
risk jail sentences and worse to call his shows on their cell phones.
But Atabay does not think that Iranian American media are the leaders
of any revolution in Iran. “This movement doesn’t have leadership, like
(Martin Luther) King or Che Guevara. This is a people’s movement. Young
people don’t listen to me. I’m just following what they are doing.”
Zokaei, however, thinks that Iranian Americans enjoy a certain street
credibility among Iranians that others may not. “People won’t listen
to Americans, but they listen to Iranian American media because these
are people who were there once upon a time.”
The other reason Iranian American media finds an audience back home
is that they provide an outlet for the frustrations of many ordinary
Iranians. “Since 2000, more than 100 newspapers and magazines were
closed in Iran by the order of (Supreme Leader) Khamenei, who recently
ordered the filtering of Iranian Web sites,” says Shahbaz Taheri,
editor of the San Jose monthly Pezhvak of Persia.
As their news options within Iran shrink, people are increasingly
flocking to outside sources. “In Iran people don’t trust their
neighbors. But they trust a television station because it’s from
the outside” says Shahbod Noori who runs the Encino-based weekly
Tehran Magazine.
When the students first started protesting the government’s proposal
to privatize the universities, they turned to Iranian American media
like Radio Yaran, Channel One and NITV to get the word out. When 500
members of Iranian special forces broke into students’ dormitories,
it was the Iranian American media that spread the word. “But we
didn’t start it. It started over there. We just covered the story,”
stresses Noori.
Iranian Americans who mostly fled to the United States after the
Islamic Revolution have always been opposed to the government
in Tehran. Humayon Nejad, publisher of Encino-based Asre Emrooz,
describes his paper as “seriously against the mullah regime.” Some
openly support Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah.
That has made them easy targets for being dubbed stooges of the
American government. The United States does directly fund some
Iranian American media, such as Radio Farda, based in Washington,
D.C., and Prague. It has also hired Iranian intellectual Amir Taheri
as a director of a new satellite television channel.
But most of the media are family owned and need their readers and
viewers to survive. “Unfortunately, a majority of these media have
financial problems that could have a very significant effect on any
role in bringing change in Iran,” says Taheri.
Reporting on the news from Iran has been a journalistic challenge as
well. “Everybody has become a reporter there — we get stories faxed
to us without any address,” says Noori. Ordinary people send by e-mail
to Javanan photographs of protesting students. “We let the pictures
speak for themselves rather than use words,” says Zokaei. Radio Iran
tries to validate its news from other European and American sources.
No one knows if the protests will lead to real democracy or just
evaporate into the Tehran summer. But Iranian American media have
realized that, even from Los Angeles, they can move Iran. Yet in
the end, editors and producers say, satellite television and Web
sites are not fomenting trouble in Iran. “The root of ‘disturbance’
in Iran is the poverty, censorship, lack of democracy, corruption and
forcing people to follow the laws of Islam like the way the Taliban
were forcing Afghans,” says Taheri.
PNS Associate Editor Sandip Roy (sandiproy@hotmail.com) is host of
“Upfront” — the Pacific News Service weekly radio program on KALW-FM,
San Francisco.