Iran’s minister of Islamic guidance Mohammad Hosseini, who oversees the country’s media activities, asked the country’s security apparatus to strengthen its supervision on the entry of foreign journalists into Iran. He announced the reason for the call to be the presence of an Israeli journalist who was in the country without the knowledge of the security and intelligence agencies during the previous presidential election. It did not name any person in this regard. But the call has been widely viewed as increasing the restrictions on foreign media in covering the June 14 presidential election. Reza Rafiei, a reporter for Freelance, acknowledged this and added, “I think a securitized tone and perspective on foreign journalists covering the elections is approaching, especially if the regime feels insecure as the voting day approaches.”
The minister’s warning could be seen as a result of the post election upheavals in 2009. At that time and after massive protests in the country, the regime imposed greater restrictions on the activities of domestic and foreign media. A number of foreign journalists were expelled from the country, the offices of foreign news outlets in Iran were shut and many domestic journalists were detained. Even Iranian journalists who worked with foreign media were arrested, and Reza Rafiei who worked for Time magazine, Maziar Bahari who worked for Newsweek, Greed born journalist Lason Athanasiadis who worked for the Washington Times and Majid Saeedi who was an international photographer are the best examples of this.
But the remarks by the minister are not the first direct indication of the government’s drive to increase their control of foreign journalists. Mohammad Jaafar Mohammadzadeh, the press deputy at the guidance ministry had announced greater monitoring of foreign media when he said, “We hope that the media itself increases its own self-supervision.”
On June 2, the minister of guidance publicly said that some newspaper and media were spreading rumors and added, “We shall confront any media or newspaper that intends to harm the elections, be it Kayhan, Iran, Bahar or Sharq, without any lenience over who the violators are affiliated with.”
Hosseini continued, “Foreigners are constantly trying to portray hopelessness to the point that Spiegel magazine recently called our elections an event without any real content or some of them write that the outcome of the elections are pre-determined, thus questioning the public’s epic. So we must use all the resources of the state to encourage people to come to vote.”
The crime of having contacts with foreign media
Last winter, 16 reformist journalists were arrested on the pretext that they had links to foreign media. Majlis deputy Ali Motahari who is also a member of the press supervision board openly said that the goal of the measure was to control the elections. Heidar Moslehi, the then minister of intelligence also stepped in and announced, “The central goal of the seditionists (a term Iranian officials use for the Green Movement and protestors to the questionable 2009 elections) is to harm the foundations of the regime and the revolution while the goal of the ministry of intelligence is to prevent this from happening.” Then in three separate but consecutive announcements declared that the detained journalists had links with Persian language media published outside the country, a charge that has remained a threat for any domestic journalist. At the same time, Iranian representatives of foreign news agencies in the country have also been put under severe pressure as arrest, charges of espionage, detention etc have threatened them ever since.
Discrimination against Iranian nationals
Despite all the restrictions that are imposed on them, many view the role of disseminating news carried out by foreign media journalists in Iran to be very important and effective. Former Time magazine reporter Reza Rafiei says in this regard, “Journalists of foreign media have a fundamental role in informing the world about what developments in Iran after the elections. Other sources of news have come into the picture such as citizen-journalist and social media. Still, professional journalists have maintained their role.”
Rafiei said that Iranian journalists who worked with foreign media faced very tough conditions and risks and expressed distress that Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari was accused of espionage just as he had faced similar charges in one instance for conducting an interview of Rafsanjani for Time magazine.
Roozonline