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July 24, 2009
Where in the World is Christiane Amanpour?
One marvels at the momentous events in Iran. Hundreds of thousands in the streets protesting, and large personalities, Rasfanjani bearding Khamenei at national prayers as those thousands assemble outside and a nation listens on radio. This is the latest culmination of events of seeing a brave people dying in those streets, contesting rifle wielding thugs with rocks and fists, on the world stage that is Iran, and yet there is a paucity of news of it. If a revolution rages without Western media coverage, is there no sound of it?
The evening networks news broadcasts are devoid of any coverage, almost silent about the dissident struggle in Iran, and “Entertainment Tonight,” (the two are very hard to distinguish in my mind), remains more preoccupied with Michael Jackson’s drug intake induced death, and the doctor who fed him his drugs (come to think of it, the two “news” sources are very hard to distinguish on this point, as well.) It is as though nothing occurs of any consequence in a land convulsed.
Where in the world is Christiane Amanpour?
In her little biography at Wikipedia – Christiane Amanpour, Ms. Amanpour’s exploits covering wars in the Persian Gulf, and in Bosnia, especially in the sniper infested hell that was Sarajevo are heralded as emblematic of the brave and stalwart reporter after the story, no matter the risk. She is described as “… having a willingness to work in dangerous conflict zones,” and for her "…highly distinguished, innovative contribution…" to journalism.
According to the “press release” tone of the Wikipedia article, no human conflict of any consequence has escaped her reportage. Wikipedia also notes that Ms. Amanpour speaks English, French and Farsi quite fluently (though they write “Persian,” in an odd syntax.) Why does she speak Farsi? She speaks Farsi because she is Iranian, living in Iran for 11 years immediately following her birth (occurring in London) to an Iranian father, during the rule of the Shah of Iran. Apparently Ms. Amanpour led a privileged life in Iran and afterward, attending prestigious schools and finding easy access to career advancement.
This stalwart, brave, intrepid and perennially in search of the truth sojourner and journalist would seem to be a natural to cover unfolding events in Iran, having a intimate knowledge of Iran and the Persians, and an avowed sympathy for the Muslim/Arab side of most stories, including her definitive bias in favor of the Bosnians, while she covered that conflict.
So, where in the world is Christiane Amanpour as momentous human events play out, in the grandeur of a people seeking freedom from the yoke of theocracy, and the savagery of theocracy struggling to maintain and impose its fundamentalist rule upon a people who would emerge into modernity?
Why isn’t Christiane Amanpour in Iran?
It is the definitive story of the yet new century.
The reason is obvious to me. It’s my opinion that she is scared that she will be abducted, tortured and killed in obscurity by the theocracy if she goes there. She is known, she is recognizable, and if she were seen on the streets actually covering a news event memorializing for all time the nature of the struggle that goes on in Iran, she would most likely be taken prisoner by the regime. Let’s be fair to her, and concede that it is highly likely those events might also occur were she to do nothing more than hunker down in a hotel room in downtown Teheran to cover events from that vantage, were her presence there to become known.
I have reached the understanding (and perhaps many others have as well) that a healthy dose of cowardice and a dollop of fear have kept the journalists away from Iran, and in spades, as the “expediency” of survival takes precedence over the attractions of the story. But is this the only factor at play that explains the institutional absence of Western journalism from the events as they swirl and twist in Iran?
I think not.
There lurked a subtlety here that had escaped me, eluded my grasp, and I think has escaped almost everybody, because I have not heard it commented upon, nor read it mentioned. If I am mistaken, and someone else has broached and treated this subject before me, I apologize in advance.
The thing that eluded me is this very healthy fear these journalists have of being in Iran; what I believe is a reluctance to expose themselves to the almost certain repression and savagery of this tyrannical regime … is this not in and of itself newsworthy?
Egregious. What a wonderful word. And, I am going to use it again, because this reluctance to report their own fears, their own state’s of minds is largely unknown to the present “journalist,” they being for the most part prone to egregious self promotion perhaps only a very close second to Hollywood types in the scheme of things, and just as “attuned” to their “feelings.” Journalists always seem to be trumpeting their skills and bravery, and their contact with their inner emotions, and awarding and lauding themselves for same, so why not report on their fear, which is also a very legitimate emotion in my view, and, a very legitimate reason for not being in Iran and reporting these events from the street?
Witness the very report at Wikipedia on Ms. Amanpour quoted above, extolling her many virtues (real and imagined) with nary a dissenting comment. She even defends her lack of objectivity in favoring the Bosnian side of things in that conflict, claiming she could hardly ignore her own feelings as to do so would be in the service of hypocrisy, and we certainly cannot be less than candid about our own biases, now, can we?
So, the point remains, quite saliently, for a profession so attuned to its own emotions, and, achingly obvious once recognized and stated; why is this fear these journalist types have of being in Iran, so much so that there hasn’t been one western journalist of note found in Iran since the dissidents took to the streets, in and of itself newsworthy?
After all, cowardice and cupidity and self serving posturing remain the stuff of journalisms view of the rest of humanity. So why do these qualities lose their relevancy and newsworthiness when applied with equal force and candor to the motives of “journalism” itself, and of journalists – Christiane Amanpour, for instance?
Could it be that the mainstream media do not want to openly report that the Iranian Theocracy is a ruthless, murderous, tyrannical, dictatorial, deranged and ruthless regime, capable of the most blood thirsty barbarisms which are grossly excessive even by the standards of the Muslim world and the Middle East? Are journalists, usually privileged by all sides as above the fray and largely immune from purposeful harm, afraid even to go there? Are they reluctant to report their own perception that this regime would murder them with the same indifference and perceived immunity as they murder everyone else they contact.
It is widely known amongst the blogs, for example, that Khamenei not only used the Basiji’s to suppress the dissenters, but imported Hamas and Hezbollah thugs to murder and savage his own citizens and subjects. This is not very widely reported in the world press, and can hardly be so, as they report next to nothing of any consequence having to do with events in Iran.
Also not widely reported in the mass media was that Neda Soltan, the young woman shot in the upper chest and drowning in her own blood even as she bled to death and known the world over by reason of a phone held in the hand of an Iranian citizen (not a cameraman) as a martyr to the personal quest for freedom, was a Christian wearing a cross around her neck and upon her chest when she was shot. Did the shooter who killed her take aim with an optical sight? If so, he probably saw the very cross she wore. This alone might have been the cause of her death, and might explain why she was singled out for death as a bystander only to the events unfolding, events which did not cause the shooter to search out and destroy others. This has been commented upon at Atlas Shrugged, and other blogs which I do not follow, but it appears to have been something “suppressed” by the “media.” A truth too provocative and unsettling perhaps? Perhaps.
The implications would be troubling, would they not?
And, the implications of the press reporting they are frightened of a murderous and vile regime, so much so that it would likely kill them for their mere presence, so “likely” as even to dissuade the likes of Christiane Amanpour to stay the heck away when she has previously exposed herself to far more danger than the average journalist – this would have disturbing implications as well, would it not? Now, it is not unduly critical to note that those reporters, who seem to show off their bravery, and to extol their own virtues, usually find themselves firmly ensconced in the supervision and care of the American armed forces, or an Israeli military unit: have you ever seen anyone embedded in a Syrian tank column, or in a Hamas detachment? To ask the question is to make the point. But one has to give Ms. Amanpour credit, where credit is due: she has undertaken things most of her hairy-chested colleagues, khaki safari shirts unbuttoned to the navels in the heat, have avoided as the proverbial plague.
Yet I believe she is genuinely afraid, and with good reason, of these murderous thugs who impose their theocratic and barbarian rule upon Iran. But is that is the only reason she is not in Iran covering these events?
I think not.
I think she is afraid of the Ayatollahs, afraid that she will die in some dungeon after being serially raped and beaten and sodomized, and killed, her body left to rot in some roadside ditch, as people search fruitlessly, the point and time of her abduction not precisely known, the locus of her torture and torment and ordeal never revealed. It is the fate, after all, of countless hundreds, men and women alike, who have been carted off by this regime.
Simply put, to report this very salient, and very obvious upon reflection fact, would be to disturb the image of Iran that the mainstream media wishes to project to the world.
In this sense, and in the truth of the matter, “journalism” is carrying the water for the Ayatollahs. Why would this be so, because even the most stupid of journalists, (and, if my experience in college among journalism majors is any indication, some of them are not the brightest bulbs in the boxes), can understand the virulent evil that this tyrannical regime represents – and the same is true of Hamas in Gaza.
Yet, these things go unreported. They are “unmentionables.” Why is this so?
To me it seems the logical conclusion that journalism also carries the water for Obama’s conception of an Iran and a regime that can be “reasoned with” to solve the world’s problems, (not the least of which are caused by Iran’s intransigent insistence upon blowing up Israel with nuclear weapons), and that Obama’s diplomacy and personal touch/magic will simply cure all.
This is the thing that cannot be reported, this is the disturbing implication that must be avoided, by the imposition of silence.
For journalists to report their personal fear of even being inside Iran is to report the truth. It is to reveal the truth about this brutally repressive, massively barbarian regime. It is to confirm the fervor by which it holds it beliefs, and by which it will conform to its stated goals to have nuclear weapons and to destroy Israel.
And, to report this truth is to destroy the picture of things that Obama wants to project upon the American public. And, to do this would undermine if not destroy the very foundations and underpinnings of Obama’s foreign policy, such that his muddle is subject to such a descriptor.
For journalists to report their personal fear is to contradict the “official” view of the Iranian regime and its theocratic rulers, and is to contradict that assertion that the Regime is capable of being dealt with by diplomatic measures. To so adequately describe these thugs, the Mullah, Imams and Ayatollahs who are the hard line advocates of killing their own people in order to project and preserve their tyrannical rule, who devoutly intend to impose the Caliphate, as to candidly admit their very real fear of even being there, is to call into fundamental question the assumption that diplomacy is a way to deal with this regime.
For “journalists” to report their real and personal fears and concerns for their very lives, is to give lie to the assertion that Iran can be dealt with diplomatically, and would be to serve the to-be-avoided-at-all-costs truth that Barack Obama has a naïve, unschooled and pathetically unsustainable vision of the Iran that he wants to “engage.”
It is just that simple. I believe these are the disturbing implications that journalists in general and Chritiane Amanpour in particular wish to avoid, wish to suppress, by their silence. In this, they serve Barack Obama’s agenda.
Journalists do not serve the people, and even to desire that might be a bit unrealistic. But neither in this nor so many other controversies, do they even remotely serve the truth, which is not unrealistic to desire and expect in any profession which professedly contains persons of honor and veracity, and integrity. And, this is a larger truth which “journalism” is not willing to either serve or acknowledge.
No, the truth of the matter emerges, journalists do not report the truth that they are scared to be in Iran, reporting the facts, because it would be to harm Barack Obama, and his naïve views of the world and of diplomacy and of geopolitics.
How can journalism reveal that barbaric madmen run the regime Barack Obama wants to engage? How can journalism reveal that Barack Obama will give these murderous thugs nuclear weapons, but his vacillation and weakness? One doesn’t wish to be too harsh, but the inescapable observation is that this is where Christiane Amanpour’s true cowardice lies.
Journalists simply carry water for Obama and the radical leftist view of the world. And Christiane Amanpour? What remains to be said of her? Well, since she is one of the biggest stars in the world at this “war correspondent” thing, and since she hasn’t reported the basis of her reluctance to be there, I believe she is she covering for Barack Obama.
It is a very sad truth, but I believe she places agenda over truth, and over the simple facts. It is intellectual and personal sin, which is unforgivable.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor John Jay is a conservative writer and satirist, whose work appears on WinterSoldier.com.
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