Global Voices, angry on Tibet coverage by media, does the same to Iran - sadly

Founders of Global Voices, a project I was involved in it first few months, Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon are outraged by how the Euro-American media is misrepresenting, twisting and even fabricated the facts of the recent incident in Tibet.

I left two comments under their related posts in which I tried to say how all this is similar to the way Iran has been treated for almost 30 years by the same media. There are clues on why I have distanced myself from the Global Voices in the past couple of years.

I left this for Ethan:

Great post, Ethan. But I wonder why the Global Voices coverage on Iran is so terribly biased against the Iranian state and is so similar to what you read everyday in the mainstream media? Why is everything so one-sided?

Frankly, I think there is need for more editorial care when it comes to Iran. No one can trust an anonymous section editor with a pseudonym who can easily hide his or her politics behind a mask of anonymity. And this is worse when there is only one person or view that is covering a huge blogosphere.

And this for Rebecca, who is actually the drive behind this coverage since she lives and works in China:

Great job and great observation, Rebbecca. I'm glad you moved to China, because now you can understand what people like me have been saying for a long time about how the Euro-American media easily twists the facts and gets away with it.

What is happening to reporting on China is actually very similar to the coverage on the Iranian elections, anything that Ahmadinejad says, women, student and workers protests, etc.

I'm affraid to say even the Global Voices' coverage on Iran follows the same pattern in just reproducing the Israeli-American propaganda against Iran, by heavily quoting from a small group of opposition bloggers.

Just take a look at the coverage yourself and compare it to the Chinese coverage. It's quite one-sided and not balanced at all, especially in terms of the topics that are selected and also the blogs that are quoted. Can you for example find anything positive about Ahmadinejad or the state in general, while there is a big chunk of the Iranians blogs now who are supportive of the state and even Ahmadinejad.

Russian, Syria, Iran, Venezuella, Cuba and now China are being misrepresented and demonised on a daily basis in the Western press and sadly Global Voices more or less repeats the same type of coverage.

The good thing is that you are now in China and can see the ugly reality of such propaganda. But what about the rest?

I'm sure by living in Iran for six months and being able to speak the language and hang out with people outside the Northern Tehran bubble, you'd reach to the same conclusion.