I am nowhere near being an expert, or even particularly well informed, about the internal politics of Iran. But, even so, I wanted to flag yesterday’s election there as a potentially important development. Also, initial media reports seem to have fallen down on the job. There was a Presidential election there, and the two main players were the incumbent, Ahmadinejad and Moussavi, the challenger.
Officials reported a suspiciously high vote for Ahmadinejad, and Professor Juan Cole explains why these vote totals are marked with badges of fraud. In fact, his blog generally is probably the best starting place for analysis of the election. Our media seems to be walking this election back into the “disputed” column, but initial reports were unduly credulous. Probably the Muncie Star Press is not the place I want to go for my international reporting, but its headline – at least for awhile – was “Ahmadinejad wins Iran election in landslide.” Even at present, I think major outlets are referring to Ahmadinejad as the “winner” before providing the information that the election is “disputed.”
Probably they should simply report that he will likely retain control regardless of whether he won the election or not. The New York Times has an article on the continued protests.
You’re absolutely right. The blogosphere seems far ahead of the mainstream media on this one, although I’ve seen a couple of instances where initial stories (like one about the head of the election ministry himself resigning in protest) not followed up on, leading the the suspicion that there are a lot of unverified rumors floating about.
I’m watching CNN as I write this and seeing what’s alledgedly a “pres conference by Ahmadinejad. Reporter after reporter, not all of them Iranian, has gotten up and sung his praises with a kind of phoniness we haven’t seen since the days of the Soviet Union. It would be impossible to imagine that kind of a scenario an the White House briefing room.
Slashdot has some technical details on this here
Not sure if it is real or not, but I tend to trust an unnamed source on the Internet more than the current Iranian government…