Let's See Facts about Iran

I find the coverage of the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program alarming. I’m less alarmed about the research Iran is pursuing than about the news coverage in the United States that presents the issue in a narrow, one-sided manner that suggests a military solution is the only solution to the problem Iran poses.

Leaving aside the actual diplomatic issues, the headlines and shabbily sourced stories suggest that armed, and probably nuclear, conflict with Iran is inevitable and will happen soon. I would have to do more serious analysis of the stories that have been appearing every day on this matter for the last few weeks to confirm my impressions of the coverage, but I wonder why the news media have abandoned the practice of citing sources for the information included in stories?

For me to consider these reports anything more than calls to arms (or in much rarer instances, anti-war statements), I would want to see where the reporters got the facts. And I would want to see facts rather than speculation before I would accept that Iran actually poses such a problem at all.

I tell my news writing students that they should report what they know and can verify. I tell them to report all the sides to a dispute. The professionals are not backing me up on this advice in the matter of Iran’s nuclear program.

For example, the San Antonio Express News ran three articles dealing with Iran Sunday morning, two in the world news section and one an op-ed piece by John Hagee, the pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio.

Only one of the articles, an Associated Press story citing the defense ministers of Israel and Germany, the president of France and the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry (most of the quotes taken from other published reports), has a basis in authoritative sources.

Perhaps Hagee can be forgiven for not following sound journalistic practices, but the Hearst news service cannot. And neither can the editor who chose to run the Hagee piece with the headline “Iran-Israel showdown looms.”

In a story for the Hearst new service, Eric Rosenberg attributes the information in the article to military experts but identifies only U.S. Senator John McCain (in the eighth paragraph of a 17-paragraph story) and David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (in the 12th paragraph).

He cites no identifiable sources for information on nuclear facilities in Iran. His unidentified sources believe or speculate far too often for me to consider this worthy reporting. Some of the information purportedly comes from the CIA “whose credibility,” Rosenberg writes, “was sorely undermined after its claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction proved false.” This august agency “believes Iran is lying.”

On the basis of such well documented reports, people like Pastor Hagee conclude that biblical prophecies are about to be fulfilled in the Middle East.

I am sure that Pastor Hagee is more familiar with such prophesies than I am, but I wish he would have given readers the opportunity to assess the validity of his interpretation of recent events by citing the sources of his information. Hagee quotes the Iranian president, citing no source. He quotes the British prime minister, citing no source. He refers to policies of the United Nations, Israel and the United States, citing no source.

Readers are supposed to be convinced because Hagee is convinced while little more than rhetorical devices support his claims that Israel is completely isolated in the world, especially in the United Nations. According to Hagee, the U.N. lets Muslims get away with just about anything while calling Israel to task for “every action.”

Hagee’s rhetorical devices include reviving the memory of the Cold War proxy wars by pointing out that the United States supports Israel while Russia supports Iran.

After touching American isolationist fears of the United Nations, Hagee then blames the International Atomic Energy Agency for declining to refer the conflict to the U.N. Security Council. Odd. Given his previous statement that “[t]he United Nations is no friend of Israel,” why would Security Council action be expected to help the situation (that is, help Israel feel more secure)? This feels more like an attempt to make the IAEA a scapegoat to let whichever country Hagee thinks will act against Iran first off the hook for its actions.

What is the role of the media in this conflict? Whose interest does it serve to have poorly documented news reports propping up predictions of impending attacks on Iran (or Israel, for that matter)?

Why are reporters willing to rely, again, on the CIA to tell them who is lying?

By accepting this questionable speculation, the reporters make it even harder for general readers to remember that this dispute, like all disputes, has more than one side. They don’t have to pay attention to any Iranian side because the CIA believes Iranians lie.

This dangerous assumption leads reporters to ignore all Iranians and anyone who presents an alternative interpretation of the history of this question. A careful review of the relevant treaties and the recent negotiations between Europe and Iran would be more challenging to carry out than reporting sound bites that have been heard already around the world or citing experts who remain in the shadows of anonymity.

There are plenty of people, Iranians included, who are not members of the Bush administration or supporters of the Islamic Republic, who have expertise and opinions on this matter. Why not quote them, for example?

Reports of threats of attack are serious business and can cause consequences. Reporters should report what they and their sources know, not what they believe. Readers should remember that the lead-in to war in Iraq involved a lot of careless, or at best naïve, reporting. We should hold reporters to higher standards.

We should identify reporters’ sources before we accept their interpretations. We should insist that the sources have names. We should demand that reporters draw on sources that represent all the sides in a dispute.

Without documentation, the public has only faith that the reports are accurate, and that’s not enough for me.

March toward Social Justice

Seguin is not a place that I would expect to have a long commitment to the celebration of the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday, but hundreds of people turn out every year to march a couple of miles from the downtown square to the TLU campus. The march is the culmination of four days of events, including an inspiring MLK concert that TLU has hosted for the past nine years. (The organizing committee promises a big blow out for next year’s 10th musical celebration of the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was born a mere 77 years ago on Jan. 15, 1929.)


This year’s pre-march speaker,Tina Lee, principal of Lifegate Christian School in Seguin, reminded those in the audience not to give up when life seems hard. She used a parable about a deaf frog to illustrate the importance of ignoring the negative messages we hear as we work toward our goals.

She told her own amazing story of overcoming financial obstacles, health problems and racism to earn several degrees, honors and good jobs. I was most struck by the story of her entrance into college. She had been accepted and offered a scholarship to a nearby university, but when she appeared to meet with university officials, the officials revoked the offer. She knew why and faced the issue head on.

Her birth certificate said she was white, but the official saw a black woman sitting in his office.

She did not go away meekly. Instead, she pointed out that her race was the only thing that had “changed” since she walked on the campus. Her credentials had indicated her potential for success, she said, and asked the official to give her a change to prove that she would thrive in the university.


Today, she is nearing completion of a doctorate.


I am inspired by her achievement, by the songs of four talented young sopranos at the concert Sunday night, by the Seguin Community Choir’s rousing gospel songs (especially “Oh Freedom”), by the smart and funny comments of Nikki Bittings between songs and readings, by the words of Rev. Frankie Rivers and Rev. W.C. McIntyre, by Dr. King’s example. This could be a long list.


I love to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy, but at the same time, I can’t help but remember how far we are from seeing his philosophy bear full fruit. At the concert and during the speech this afternoon, I nodded my head in agreement, clapped and let out a loud “uh huh” one or two times. I did the same while reading a column by Leonard Pitts reminding us that King’s goals did not only apply to racial equality but also sought to remove the barriers of class and unfair economic advantage.

Pitts,who is teaching in Appalachia for a few months, reported that he was struck by the similarities in the lives of poor white people to the dysfunctions he is more accustomed to seeing in poor black communities.

I was also nodding and saying “amen” (that's the influence of living for four years in Durham, N.C., where the population is more than half African American and teaching at North Carolina Central University, the successor to the first liberal arts university in America for African American students, not any particular personal religiosity)in agreement with authors and callers on several NPR talk programs devoted to MLK and LBJ (for the non-Texan young folks, that’s Lyndon Baines Johnson) as they discussed the legacy of the civil rights movement. Among the topics that came up were King's biography, including FBI surveillance of King, Johnson’s roots in the hardscrabble Hill Country (before it was the in place to cultivate grapes or take refuge from California real estate prices), the divergent views the two men held on war in Vietnam and Johnson’s foreknowledge that his push to pass civil rights legislation would destroy the Democratic Party in the South.

Both of these men knew that social justice was necessary but lacking in the United States. They had ideas about how to create a more just society and they weren’t afraid to try them.

If only we could all be brave enough to march toward justice undaunted by fear of what we might encounter on the way there.

Through a Veil of Egg

After I wrote the last post, I started reading We are Iran: The Persian Blogs, a book celebrating and chronicling the use of Weblogs to circumvent restrictions on self-expression in Iran.

The number of blogs in Farsi (or Persian) is far out of proportion to the number of Farsi speakers in the world, especially in comparison to other languages like French. According to Iranian blogger My Other Fellow, more people are writing blogs in Farsi than in any language except English. OK, the Iranian blogs are tied with those in French for second. But when you think that Farsi has a lot fewer speakers than French, this is really remarkable and amounts to about 23 million Farsi blogs.

This movement, and Iranian bloggers have consciously and intentionally established a cyber movement, provokes the ire of leaders of the Islamic Republic regularly. Bloggers are arrested. Blog hosting sites are blocked or shut down. We are Iran presents translations of posts from a wide range of blogs, both political and personal. The leaders of the Persian blogging movement are acutely aware that the personal is political (like feminists have been saying) in the context of their country’s recent history and they celebrate all efforts at self-expression.

As I continue to read the book I know I’ll have more thoughts about this movement and the use of new communication technologies to bring about social change, but for now, I’m thinking about Chapter two, “Revolution, War and Dissent.” This chapter reminded me (as if I had forgotten) of the checkered history of the United States in supporting democracy in the world, which seems particularly relevant to the questions I posed in the last post about who’s in charge of promoting the value of democracy here in the United States.

Of course, it was not news to me that the face of democracy the United States turns toward the world has egg on it. In the case of Iran, the CIA sponsored a coup d’etat that removed Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953 to allow the return of the Pahlavi family to dynastic rule in the country.

Around the same time, and after years of either surreptitiously or openly controlling the governments of Caribbean nations, the United States removed an elected government in Guatemala.

In the mid-1950s the U.S. government led Hungarians to believe that it would support their efforts to break free of Soviet occupation, and then didn’t.

Twenty years later, the United States helped bring Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile to replace a popularly elected, but socialist, president Salvador Allende.

In the 1970s and 1980s the United States first made and then brought down Manuel Noriega in Panama. (I arrived at the consulate in Leningrad one day in December 1989 to find the Marine guards dressed in camouflage. They were on alert because U.S. forces had invaded Panama.)

Not to mention supporting Saddam Hussein when it was convenient and denouncing his human rights record and invading Iraq when it was not.

The list is too long to include all U.S. actions based on realpolitik rather than democratic ideals

How do we make sense of the government programs to promote democracy abroad, both the peaceful and the military, when the United States has such a checkered history of supporting local self-determination, including democratically elected, democratically inclined leadership, around the world?

How do U.S. political leaders decide when it’s more expedient to have a friendly dictator in place and when it would really be better to support democratic processes? Am I some kind of naïve dupe to volunteer my efforts in Armenia (or anywhere else)?

I fielded a lot of questions from Armenians who couldn’t believe that people would do anything if they didn’t personally benefit. For the sake of full disclosure, I received a grant of $1200 from my employer to help pay for airfare to Armenia via Paris (about $1600) and my friend Ellie put me up for three weeks at her home. YCAP gave me lunch, transportation and the services of an interpreter. I went in the hole to talk to young people in Armenia about the ideal role of the media in democracy and to suggest how they could participate in mass communication in a democratic way.

I understand why they wondered what my motives were for doing this. Armenia receives a disproportionate share of the U.S. foreign assistance budget. The Armenian community in the United States is large and influential, but if Armenia were located farther from Iran, Iraq and the Middle Eastern oil fields in general, I imagine it wouldn’t seem so important to build a big embassy in Yerevan or make such an effort to cultivate this small, land-locked, oil-less country. Armenians correctly suspect that U.S. assistance comes with expectations attached.

In this world of realpolitik, however, a lot of people maintain their ideals and believe that the world will simply be a better place if Armenians (and the rest of us) can build healthy, participative democratic governments. I am the face of democracy. Ellie is the face of democracy. Perhaps you are the face of democracy too.

Those of us who continue to cultivate democracy, however we do that, can’t always rely on the official institutions of the United States to support us or be our mouthpiece, but we have to keep at it. Ultimately, it is up to us individually to conduct civic education by our own example. It is up to us to remember that without attentive citizens, there is no democracy.

It is up to us to learn about and remember Mossadegh and to be willing to stand up for democratic movements and constitutions around the world, including here at home. Especially here at home. We need to be brave like Iranian bloggers. And we need to make decisions about when to speak and when our interests may actually be served by silence. (More on this last topic is to come in later posts.)

The Face of American Democracy?

Reza met Bill Bradley Sunday.

You remember him, right? Tall guy, former pro basketball player, former senator, ran for president in 2000.

It seems that Reza was the only person in Austin who could pick this larger than life guy out in a crowd, and he called to tell me about it. “I’ve got a story for your blog,” he started the conversation.

Bill Bradley (who is well over six feet tall) and Reza (who’s a little shorter) both went out for a walk at Town Lake Sunday afternoon. Reza was enjoying his own anonymity when he spotted this guy who looked like Bill Bradley. He couldn’t believe that Bradley could take a walk without anybody recognizing him in a crowded public park in Austin, the most politically aware place in Texas and a blue area on the election map, so he decided to follow the tall man.

Once he had ascertained that this man really was Bill Bradley, Reza spoke to him. He even has a photo that his friend took of the meeting. I’ve seen it. I recognize Bill Bradley.

Reza was glad he met someone who has made a mark in American civic life, but he’s disappointed in Austin. “If people in Austin don’t recognize a guy like that,” he said with a note of despair in his voice as it trailed off.

I tried to comfort him by asking whether people would know Bill Clinton if he turned up at Town Lake. Reza was indignant. “People would know Clinton,” he said.

Then I tried saying that I probably wouldn’t recognize Bill Frist if I ran into him in a park, but Reza would not be consoled. “Frist is ordinary looking. He could be anybody,” he said.

Anyway, I lied. I’d probably recognize him. I once identified Felipe Gonzalez, who was prime minister of Spain and about the same height as everybody else, when I saw him at a hotel in Leningrad. I can make out powerful men in crowds.

And so I ask: why don’t we remember the faces of the people who lead the U.S. government? Or maybe I should ask: what are we doing that is so much more important than learning about the people who lead the U.S. government? Or even: why do so many of us just not care?

Ironically, the U.S. government spends a lot of effort promoting the value of democracy and the importance of effective participation in civic life to people who don’t live here. When I was in Armenia, I worked on a project that supports young people’s involvement in the civic life of small towns and villages. This is just one of many programs that are at least partially paid for by our tax dollars. Similar programs are carried out under the auspices of the United States Agency for International Development around the world.

When I told a visitor to Seguin about my summer adventure in Armenia, she said, “Couldn’t you do that here?” I think I do, but in the university classroom.

Where does civic education take place here in the United States? Who teaches us to value democracy? I think public schools are supposed to inculcate civic values, along with all the other tasks they have on their plate. Maybe the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts?

Some kids are, I’m sure, learning to be politically active in their churches, but most of them probably wouldn’t be too excited about Bill Bradley even if they did recognize him.

I met a 20-something man from Maracaibo, Venezuela, this weekend. Although I don’t know if he has a clue about candidates for president of the United States, when I asked Pablo what he thought of Hugo Chavez, he answered, “I don’t hate him.”

He then paused before adding, “He was democratically elected. That’s the most important thing. He’s not as bad as they say here.”

I, rudely perhaps, asked a similar question about the recent elections in Bolivia, and Pablo answered, “He was elected democratically. If that’s who they want, they should have him.”

Whatever Pablo’s positions on the issues that face the republics of his region of South America, he’s sure that democracy is necessary.

Do we have such a sound faith in democracy? How would Americans answer similar questions about George W. Bush?

We could say he was democratically elected… this time.