Iran in flames; media struggles to report
It's hard to determine what precisely is happening in Tehran, since foreign journalists are essentially not allowed to report, but the social media sources are producing a great deal of content. Some "old media" sources such as the NY Times are doing a decent job of aggregating content, such as they do on their Lede blog, which has been updating all day. But the Times can't seem to keep up with sites such as the Huffington Post. The videos, photos, and eyewitness accounts are amazing.
Some videos, such as this BBC Persia video on Youtube, show shocking scenes where civilians run and hide from (generally) off-camera threats. Why does everyone flee around 2:20? At 4:10, is that a gunman shooting down into the street? Chaos.
One bright spot on the reporting end is that the New York Times's Roger Cohen is apparently in Tehran. He filed this sobering piece today.
Cohen mentions the courage of Iranian women in particular; For a country and indeed region where women are stereotyped as being submissive, they are often taking a lead in the uprising. They can be seen resisting police officers in this video making the rounds, at Shiraz University, and have reportedly been calling men "cowards" if they run from the police.
Hats off to Cohen and the Times for that piece, though. Amazing reporting. He is one of the few Western reporters in the country, and some of his other recent article are here and here.
Couldn't agree more with Andrew Sullivan, who writes that "Cohen proves the old media is not dead."
Update later in the evening
The NY Times blog The Lede apparently clocked out before dinner time.
Update | 5:36 p.m. The Lede will be back with more updates tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile, bloggers like the Huffington Post keep updating all night.
On another note of media disappointment, CNN decided to run a two-hour pre-recorded program on the economy tonight. Whoops. This was after a day of lackluster pseudo reporting, basically Don Lemon reading Twitter and Facebook. The only thing CNN had going for it Saturday was Christiane Amanpour taking over Larry King's show. She was great challenging the president, and CNN needs her analysis more often.
Meanwhile, Fox anchors were touting the fact that they were the only cable news network with live Iran coverage all evening. Indeed.
Some links to sites (Twitter and otherwise) with good content, mostly via my friend Jake:
http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/TehranBureau
http://twitter.com/LaraABCNews
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8105207.stm
Some videos, such as this BBC Persia video on Youtube, show shocking scenes where civilians run and hide from (generally) off-camera threats. Why does everyone flee around 2:20? At 4:10, is that a gunman shooting down into the street? Chaos.
One bright spot on the reporting end is that the New York Times's Roger Cohen is apparently in Tehran. He filed this sobering piece today.
Cohen mentions the courage of Iranian women in particular; For a country and indeed region where women are stereotyped as being submissive, they are often taking a lead in the uprising. They can be seen resisting police officers in this video making the rounds, at Shiraz University, and have reportedly been calling men "cowards" if they run from the police.
Hats off to Cohen and the Times for that piece, though. Amazing reporting. He is one of the few Western reporters in the country, and some of his other recent article are here and here.
Couldn't agree more with Andrew Sullivan, who writes that "Cohen proves the old media is not dead."
Update later in the evening
The NY Times blog The Lede apparently clocked out before dinner time.
Update | 5:36 p.m. The Lede will be back with more updates tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile, bloggers like the Huffington Post keep updating all night.
On another note of media disappointment, CNN decided to run a two-hour pre-recorded program on the economy tonight. Whoops. This was after a day of lackluster pseudo reporting, basically Don Lemon reading Twitter and Facebook. The only thing CNN had going for it Saturday was Christiane Amanpour taking over Larry King's show. She was great challenging the president, and CNN needs her analysis more often.
Meanwhile, Fox anchors were touting the fact that they were the only cable news network with live Iran coverage all evening. Indeed.
Some links to sites (Twitter and otherwise) with good content, mostly via my friend Jake:
http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/TehranBureau
http://twitter.com/LaraABCNews
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8105207.stm
posted by bp at
5:14 PM
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