Highlights of the week

Earthquakes in western Iran: state-controlled media keeps silent, infrastructure remains neglected, citizens become indignant

Media coverage of developments in Syria comes under growing criticism

The cost of the NAM meeting in Tehran: expenses will reach tens of millions of dollars, activity in the capital will grind to a halt

Official unemployment figures released: slight increase in overall unemployment rate, decrease in unemployment rate in most provinces

Brief spotlight on Supreme Leader’s shoes

Earthquakes in western Iran: official media keeps silent, infrastructure remains neglected, citizens become indignant The earthquakes that hit northwestern Iran last Saturday, August 11, and claimed the lives of over 300 people have rekindled the debate on the poor performance of Iran’s state-controlled media in times of emergency. News websites affiliated with government critics and Iranian bloggers strongly criticized the state-controlled media for almost completely ignoring the strong earthquakes in the first few hours after they had taken place. The disaster received no coverage from media outlets, which continued their regular programming, including reports from ceremonies for the month of Ramadan. One day after the earthquakes, the Iranian television even aired a regularly- scheduled entertainment show.

In an editorial published earlier this week, the Asr-e Iran website said that Iran Broadcasting once again failed in its performance after the earthquakes. While news websites, news agencies, and social networks provided fast and continuous coverage of the earthquakes and their consequences, it took many hours for the state-controlled media to begin reporting the events. This is a grave offense to the people of Iran, the article said. Iran Broadcasting, not even one of whose TV channels provided reports from the disaster area, saw fit to run news stories on a car accident involving a truck and a cyclist in Germany in which one person was killed and three were injured, and on several United States citizens protesting against the economic situation in their country. The official broadcasting authority, which interrupted its regular programming during the Olympics to broadcast live coverage from London, did not consider the earthquake in western Iran as newsworthy as the Taekwondo, wrestling, and ping pong contests. The website wondered when Iran Broadcasting, which gets the enormous sum of thousands of billions of tomans from the state budget every year, will stop being nothing more than a vehicle for government propaganda and earn the right to be called Iran’s National Broadcasting Authority—one that will appeal to all citizens. The website also criticized the daily newspapers Resalat and Keyhan, whose Sunday editions did not report the earthquakes at all (Asr-e Iran, August 12).

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