Most Ridiculous Censorship Stories, Iranian Style: Remove the Condom; Run the Report

Iran imprisons more journalists than most countries in the world, and regularly comes in top in the Reporters Without Borders index of countries that violate press freedom.

Since the printing press arrived in Iran in the late nineteenth century, the country’s newspapers have been squirming under the thumb of kings and ministers, a phenomenon that merely continued under the Islamic Republic. In recent years writers and journalist have borne the brunt of political pressures, but with the advent of the internet and the dramatic events of 2009, many of those instances of censorship have been especially egregious. We recount some of the worst offenders below.

 

Our Newspaper Sold Out

By Marjan Hejazi

After the presidential elections of 2009, the state barred many political figures from giving interviews. In those days I worked for the newspaper Etemaad (“Trust”). The reformist daily Shargh had been suspended and Etemaad was enduring the fraught aftermath of the elections and the suspension. Everybody behaved cautiously, like me today, writing this article under a pseudonym. I have a job at a newspaper that I am not sure I will still have at the end of the year.

In the summer of 2009, the press authorities censored whatever I wrote about Saeed Mortazavi and the Kahrizak detention centre, where prostestors were being held, raped, and tortured.  Mortazavi was the prosecutor of the Islamic Revolutionary Court and later went on trial for the torture and death of detainees, but for a time, he was untouchable in the media. 

I had to publish my writings on Facebook, but then I could not reach more than a thousand people and they were mostly friends and other media people. Compared to the circulation of a proper newspaper, 1000 was nothing. Social media was a platform, yes, but a modest one that reached those who already knew about and agreed with what was I writing.

My editor asked me to pass the responsibility of reporting on the subject to another person. He believed that my sensitivity to the “Mortazavi Affair” was the reason that my writings were censored.

As happens so often in an atmosphere of censorship, frustrated editors and journalists start blaming each other for misreading the supposedly obvious guidelines. My editor transferred the Mortazavai beat to another reporter, but the censorship continued.

We on the politics page were losing patience until the editor formally informed us that we were not to write anything negative about Mortazavi and must only print what the news agencies report. Gradually, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the mayor of Tehran and a candidate in the 2009 election, joined the list of subjects about which we could not write anything critical.

Then came the elections of 2013 and the subsequent publication of the list of media outlets that had accepted Mortazavi’s money. Etemaad was on the list with close to $8000. For a moment, I thought how much more honorable I was than the newspaper for which I was working. Many times I had rejected gifts in return for writing reports to order.

Many of my colleagues or their friends were imprisoned. We worked for about $200 a month, without insurance or contracts, in a suffocating atmosphere and under inordinate tension. Our only hope was for the freedom of the press, for respecting our readers and for our professional ethics. But we had been sold out beforehand for $8000. This is my most ridiculous journalistic experience.

 

Remove the Condom, Run the Report

By Omid Gharib

I was late. All along the way in the taxi, I was thinking about how to replace that word. Many words came to my mind, most of them from jokes that I had heard. It was a strange word to use in the field of cinema. I sat behind my desk and started writing. When I finished, I gave it to the typist, that word included. I did not tell anybody about it.

Twenty minutes later the editor called me. “We better not print the report,” he said in a low voice. I asked him why. “It;s problematic,” he answered, “and it is not such an important festival.” I did not know what to do. I was not on very good terms with the editor, but I knew that what was bothering him was that word. In his place, perhaps I wouldn’t have run the report either. I assked him what the problem was, and he told me to go and ask the editor-in-chief. “If he approves, I’ll run it.”

It reminded me of what the organizer of the AIDS Festival had told us at the press conference. He had complained that nobody pays any attention to the disease because “they are even afraid of the name ‘AIDS’.” He asked for our help. It was so simple: I could cut out part of his statements, and he had used that word only once.

I found the editor-in-chief and showed him my report. Before he could read it, I quickly told him about the problem. He laughed and told me in confidential voice to “cut it. Only that word.” I objected that, not long ago, it was even on TV. A specialist used it, so why shouldn’t we? He told me to follow him to the office of a news agency’s director. The editor then instructed me to tell the story myself. I started to read the report from the beginning. When I reached that word, he burst out with laughter. “Do you think this is America?” he said. “Remove the condom; run the report.”

 

Reports of Exam Questions Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

By Atefeh Javam

It was the summer of 2003 and I had just started working in journalism professionally. When I joined the newspaper, I started working on the accidents page. I was quite excited because I wanted to become a sensational reporter, like those that I had seen in the movies or had read about in books. I wanted to pursue tough subjects that nobody else, subjects that had an impact on society.

I had just gone through the college entrance exam and was anxiously waiting for the results to find out whether I had been accepted. If I had not passed, I would’ve had to quit my job and sit at home and study for another nine months. At the time, the topic of the university entrance exam – the concours, which determines every bright young person’s future – was as hot as it had been in the 1990s. Rumors were circulating that the test questions were being sold and bought, something which was both fascinating and frightening for the “entrance kids,” as applicants for colleges are called.

I resolved to exact justice from the test dealers, both for myself and for others like me. I don’t remember whether I made the proposal or somebody else made it but, in any case, I started my detective work, happy and resolute. After two weeks of hustling and bustling, the trail led me to the individual directly responsible for selling the test questions, the son-in-law of a person in the higher echelons of power. The editor at the newspaper, however, decided otherwise. The paper ran my neutered investigation under the headline “Sales of Test Questions Is Just a Rumor!”

Well, I did my best and I told everybody that I could. In private, of course.

 

Stopping Causing the Public Anxiety

By Behnaz

It was 2012 and currency fluctuations were at their height. The rial had lost half its value overnight, and the instability continued. The prices changed day by day and hour by hour and drove up the cost of food, clothing and even cigarettes. Amidst all this the newspaper received a directive which told us to stop publishing reports about rising prices because “they cause anxiety in the public mind.” So we stopped running the reports which were nothing more than accounts of a few supermarkets, car dealers and real estate agents. Instead we started publishing a daily table of prices, mostly about currencies, coins and gold, and readership was considerable.

Within a few days, however, the tables caused us trouble as well. Publishing prices, the new directive said, “cause anxiety in the public mind,” even though the tables did not cite past prices, did not speculate on future trends, and did not comment on their positive or negative effects.

Reporting on the economy means figures, predictions and analysis of policies, but our hands were badly tied. We started a small column titled “Last Year Today” in which we wrote about the most important economic events a year ago on that day. For example, we wrote about when the price of thehdollar hit 1,200 tomans, or when chicken reached 1,800 tomans, or coins became incredibly expensive. The good part was that the material were published previously and we just had to add a title and a lead, and that was that.

Again it did not last even a month. We were told that publishing anything about prices that would cause despair among the public is forbidden. On the last point, however, they had my sympathy. Three-fold increase in prices within a year is really shocking and maddening, even for us who were writing about the numbers on a daily basis.

 

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