Tehran and Tegucigalpa: A tale of two capitals

[IndianaGreen]

Tehran and Tegucigalpa: A tale of two capitals

9 July 2009

In Tehran, demonstrations called by the defeated US-backed presidential candidate are given non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage by the American media. The charges of former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi of a stolen election and a “coup d’etat” are embraced uncritically and reported as fact by the New York Times, the Washington Post and other “authoritative” newspapers, without any independent investigation or substantiation. A media propaganda campaign ensues aimed at isolating and destabilizing the ruling faction in Iran headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The protests are dominated by better-off sections of the urban middle class, who largely voted for Mousavi and support his right-wing program of closer ties to American and European imperialism and a rapid introduction of pro-market policies. The working class, seeing nothing to support in the faction of “reformists” headed by Mousavi and the billionaire former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, abstains from the protests.

The media dispenses with any pretence of objectivity and proclaims the protest movement and its leaders the spearhead of a “green revolution” for democracy. Every act of repression by the Iranian regime is given headline coverage, and rumors of hundreds of deaths are reported as fact. The US media focuses its wrath in particular on the regime’s efforts to block Internet and mobile phone communication.

Two weeks later, the US-trained and equipped military of Honduras breaks into the home of the elected president, bundles him onto a plane and flies him out of the country at gunpoint. The basic crime of the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, is aligning his government with Washington’s nemeses in Latin America, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and carrying out modest popular reforms within Honduras, such as raising the minimum wage.

There can be no dispute that Honduras has undergone a coup. But the event is barely reported by the US press and broadcast media. Neither are the arrests and deportations of ministers of Zelaya’s government, the closures of local media outlets sympathetic to the ousted president, the arrests of foreign journalists and shutdown of US-based outlets such as CNN, and the imposition of a de facto state of siege, including a dusk-to-dawn curfew and the mobilization of thousands of Honduran troops in every major city.

The coup regime, which is backed by the Honduran business elite, the Congress, the courts and the Church, seeks to halt Internet and cell phone communication—evoking no protest from the US media.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/pers-j09.shtml

[Chulanowa]

1. I feel social class is only a small part of the difference

The larger difference is that the Media is actively hoping for Isran to slide into anarchy, both for its own ratings, abd because the right wing gasbags who own the media want "revenge" against Iran. Thus the reporting of violence in Iran is ready and gleeful.

On the other hand, Latin nations have ALWAYS gotten about the same media coverage as kidnapped black kids. That is, "in other news, now time for a commercial!" sort of coverage.