Hyping Iran, Ignoring Mexico
By JOHN ROSS
Mexico City.
A stolen election by an entrenched regime? Opposition charges that more votes were cast than ballots distributed to the polling places? That independent electoral observers were barred from witnessing the vote count? Demands for a recount to which election officials respond by offering to recount just 10% of the vote? A regime-controlled media that exalts the incumbent’s victory and demonizes the loser? The use of alternative media by the opposition to get their side of the story out? Massive street protests by millions of peaceful demonstrators waving homemade signs and wearing bracelets displaying the color of their movement? At least 20 protestors gunned down by authorities and paramilitaries? Worldwide moral indignation stirred up by the international media?
Iran 2009? Yes!
Mexico 2006? Yes and no.
All aspects of the above scenario describe the Great Mexican Electoral Flimflam three years ago this July 2nd – save for the conundrum of worldwide moral indignation. Virtually ignored by the international media, the stealing of the Mexican presidential election by the right-wing oligarchy stirred little indignation anywhere outside of Mexico.
A comparison of coverage extended to both instances of electoral fraud by the New York Times, the “paper of record”, is instructive.
NYT coverage of the upheaval in Iran has been overwhelming. During the first nine days of the electoral crisis, the Times ran at least one front-page story daily – from Election Day Friday, June 12th through Saturday, June 20th, the Iranian electoral sham occupied the right-hand column (the lead story) in the international edition on eight out of nine days. The Times also ran a second Iran story on the front page in six out of the nine editions reviewed – on four of those days, the stories were accompanied by a four and sometimes five column color photo, mostly of multitudes supporting the challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who made his mark in history back in the 1980s by receiving a Christian bible and a key-shaped cake from the emissaries of Ronald Reagan in exchange for funding the Nicaraguan Contras.
As the week wore on, many stories focused on street protests and violence inflicted by paramilitaries that reportedly left a score of demonstrators dead. In addition to the front-page stories, jumps ran inside over one or more pages daily, accompanied by additional photos.
The Times sent four by-lined reporters into Teheran for the festivities – Robert Worth, Michael Slackman, Neil MacFarquhar, and the Iranian Nazna Pathi, plus Eric Schmidt reporting from Washington. Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, flew to the Iranian capital to pen a daily journal. All of the Times’ reporters in Teheran were housed in five-star hotels in the upscale north of the city where Mousavi has a substantial upper middle class base.
Meanwhile back in New York, the Times editorial board ran a pair of editorials during the first week of the upheaval decrying repression of peaceful protest and the purported vote fraud. At least seven op-ed screeds vilified incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose condemnations of Israel the Times assiduously combats, and celebrated the presumed victor Mousavi, albeit with varying degrees of caution.
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