Read All Over

The turbulence, protests and accusations of voter fraud in Iran have been extensively covered in the news for the past week. Each source, the New York Times, BBC News, USA Today and the China Post, had multiple articles on the escalating instability in the country. In the Sunday Times an article about immoral practices against protester had under the fold mention in a boxed synopsis. The article focuses on an open letter that both undermines Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election victory and called out the vicious psychological and physical abuse of protesters. While the Times focuses on the violation of civil rights, the BBC looks at how Mir Hossein Mousavi will move forward after the potentially fraudulent election. The final four paragraphs, which are brief, discuss the cause of the protests. There is a very vague mention of the physical abuses suffered by arrested protesters; they merely point out the twenty deaths that occurred at the beginning of the protests. The BBC attempts to put the situation into a positive context where Mir Hossein Mousavi expresses his desire to give the current opposition a legal backing rather than challenging the system as a whole. The Times coverage goes more in depth in it’s focus, but a common thread between BBC and the China Post is Mousavi’s wife talking about her brother’s detainment. The source is the same, but the BBC uses the singular reference to the arrest. The China Post goes farther with her perspective on the situation as the focus of the article, specifically her anger at the militarized response. Mousavi is also quoted in the China Post, but unlike the BBC paraphrase, it is direct and certainly not put into a positive context. The China Post gives a unique view in using Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi’s wife, as the main source because she is closely attached to the events by way of her marriage. While the protesters’ opinion sourced in the Times and USA Today are important, their role is from an outside perspective, not as a person who bore the direct affront in the hypothesized fraud. This is not to say that the proceeding election did not affect them, the ensuing protest proves that, rather that an official’s perspective provides greater significance to the reader. USA Today and the Times synonymously use Human Rights leaders as sources throughout their articles. All three, unlike the BBC, give longer accounts with more in-depth coverage on the outcome of June 12th. However, USA Today is similar to the BBC in that the coverage is meant to be more hopeful as opposed to strictly exploring the abuses of power. USA Today looks at the global response to the protests and the international unity evoked by the election’s outcome. In looking at these four accounts the reader has to consider the question: which aspect is more important for me to consider? By reading the parallel accounts, the reader becomes better suited to judge the causality and therefore see the importance of a worldwide effort to support the protests of Iran. The gravity of the events as a whole calls for more than a singular source and makes objectivity difficult to judge. This isn’t true in all circumstances; a report on who won Saturday’s Yankees game leaves no room for subjectivity. However, the reader who is looking to be fully informed should do so by utilizing multiple news sources for reasons expressed throughout.