December 10, 2003

To be a reporter and an activist at the same time is a tough job

Not a single press for Net censorship yet, while we've managed to collect about 200 comments from Iranians who've experienced censorship.

There a couple of possibilities for this lack of attention:

1. It's not loud enough so they haven't heard it
2. It's not important enough for them when Iraq and Terrorism capture the news
3. The media, don't think the news is true
4. They think I'm exaggerating things in order to promote myself

Whatever the reason is, I should say that I'm really pissed off and disappointed. On one hand Iranians inside Iran have got used to seeing their basic rights denied by the system with various excuses and they don't bother anymore; on the other hand people outside Iran are pretty much pre-occupied with their education, family, work, and their basic needs; so they don't care much about these kind of stuff anymore. The result is that a few number of people like me, should perform two roles at once: to be activists and be part of things, and to observe and report them to the world.

I'm glad that there are some people like Matt Haughy* who understand this tough position, but I'm really tired of being a "stick, both sides shitty", as they say it in Persian.

* He had asked me "not to promote myself" on the MetaFilter and I explained to him that sometimes I'm part of the things that are done and if I don't report them, nobody actually get to know about some of them. He responded that he understands it.

Posted by hoder at December 10, 2003 2:12 AM

Comments
Dear Hoder, I wanted to highly thank you as an Iranian who was following your written stuff from printed papers and the first days of your blog. I - as an immigrant to the US - really do agree with most of your socio-political ideas. I indeed think that your creative methods in some stuff like being symbolic candidate for Parliament or making the net movement for stopping censorship in Iran are extremely valuable. I wanted to let you know that a lot of highly educated young generation Iranian really apprecite your job. Any sort of work that you need, I am personally willing to help you. Thank You Danny
- By: Danny on December 11, 2003
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I guess the reasons are: 1- you always try to promote yourself everywhere 2- Insult everyone you want 3- Try to make weblogs more important than what they are believe me friend as long as you try to manifest yourself as a leader, nobody really cares about what you do, couz simply nobody wants to hear the same shit like Mullahs. I have some friends in Toronto and none of them, yes NONE OF THEM are happy with you and your stuff, and I guess it shows how popular you are. come on you can not say criticism is not nice so that's why nobody likes you and your stuff. I'd recommend you give a rest to blogging for at least one month. you will see you'll get better. truly, P.S. I have contacted Cara and she has told me they do not believe those comments that much, they guess that is just an stupid propaganda.
- By: Eddi on December 11, 2003
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I hope some of the material at my anticensorware web pages can be of use to you: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/ http://sethf.com/anticensorware/
- By: Seth Finkelstein on December 10, 2003
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