January 7, 2008

Robert Tait should have been fired by The Guardian's editors much earlier

Even though it is sad he has to leave Iran, to be honest with you, I'm quite happy to see Robert Tait leaving his job as The Guardian's Tehran correspondent.

He is a great example of a lot of journalist who were painting a rosy picture of Iran under the reformist government and after they favourite candidate, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, unexpectedly lost the election, suddenly started to rediscover Iran as the most brutal and dangerous theocratic dictatorship in the world.

In the past two years, Robert Tait's reporting not much different from any given Fox News reporter, except that Tait always kept his faith in and loyalty to Rafsanjani and his allies.

Gareth Smyth, Financial Times' correspondent, who sadly was forced to leave Iran recently described the type of journalism that the likes of Tait were doing in a recent article, titled "Breaking eggs in Iran":

[T]here was a strong western view that the reformists (popular, goodies) were confronting the conservatives (unpopular, baddies) over social freedom and women's clothes. Everything had to fit that model...

[O]nce Ahmadinejad was elected, the real circus began in such haste there was no time, even had there been the inclination, for any rational media post mortem. American and Israeli officials - and some news editors - questioned the new president's sanity
and intelligence.

Ahmadinejad came to power as a fundamentalist but then ordered sports authorities to lift the ban on women attending top football matches. By then Syast-e Ruz, a newspaper close to the President, had scoffed at election-time rumours that he would segregate men and women on pavements and in cemeteries. Those who knew Ahmadinejad best were least surprised. They said his religion was closer to the organic faith of the mass of Shia Iranians than to the learned ayatollahs.

I personally remember at least two occasions where Tait was lying outright about which I blogged:

I guess any fair observer would agree with me that if Mr. Tait had filed such false and baseless reports about any other country, he would have been sacked by his own editors. But when it comes to Iran, Cuba, Syria and now Russia, every deviance from basic codes of journalism is tolerated, even by a supposedly progressive The Guardian.

Is this piece going to cost me my regular columns at The Guardian? I hope not, and I wish The Guardian replaces him with someone who would be a journalist this time, not a shameless Foreign Office propagandist.

Ultimately, perhaps, Mr. Tait should go to his previous job as the Jerusalem correspondent for The Times. There he would fit rather perfectly.

Posted by hoder at January 7, 2008 4:14 PM| TrackBack

Comments
Do you think there is any correspondent in the western media in englkish or french that really observes Iran and is able to give us some insight and not only fixed schemes and prejudices? I always would like to know... Oh, and BTW, happy birthday (for all the year) Bel
- By: Isabel on January 11, 2008
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"Ultimately, perhaps, Mr. Tait should go to his previous job as the Jerusalem correspondent for The Times. There he would fit rather perfectly." You're sick. Antisemetism like this is a sickness, pure and simple. You defame an entire people with a sleight of hand and then you're outraged when Sobhani goes after you for defamation.
- By: Rostam on January 8, 2008
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The article on the internet censorship is technically not at fault at all. Iran did censor all those sites mentioned in it, albeit for a brief period of time. Robert Tait could have filed his story before the resumption of access to the sites mentioned. Sadly, no newspaper in the world runs a column through which it updates past stories, that would have probably rectified the situation. I think looking at everything in terms of pro and anti Rafsanjani is to some extent preposterous. You should look at the way civil rights have gone down the drain in Iran in the past couple of years, and how no foreign journalist with any sort of professional aspiration other than the desire to copy reports from IRNA or ISNA and attend booze-laden parties in North Tehran has now been forced to leave the country. We are left in the hands of a team of Iranian stringers who are all within the iron fist of the Ettelaat, and whose stories are inevitably doctored by the authors themselves.
- By: Aloonak on January 8, 2008
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The reason you have so few comments to your articles is that you are so obviously a shill for the Iran Foreign Ministry, and,ultimately, the mullahs--your piece on Tait is just one example. One does not need to have PhD in Iranian plitics to see how obvious this all is. If you are honestly an atheist who insists that an Islamic state is Iran's best option for the country, then you are simply a useful idiot.
- By: Bob on January 8, 2008
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