Iranian Perspective on UK Riots: It’s an Uprising Against an Oppressive Monarchy
Posted: Sunday, August 21, 2011
by Joel Kontinen
http://joelkontinen.blogspot.com/
Truth does not have a very high priority in the propaganda wars. Following the North African and Near Eastern uprisings in predominately Muslim countries, the Iranian government has come up with its own version of the cause of the recent riots in Britain.
It is an uprising of the poor and oppressed against the repressive British monarchy, the Fars News Agency informs us. The agency is owned by Iranian revolutionary guards, which might say something about its objectivity. In addition, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, controls Keyhan, an Iranian newspaper that likewise provides us with a fresh new look at the cause of the British uprising.
There are some problems with this approach, however. As the British daily Guardian recently put it, “Iranian media affiliated to the Islamic regime have been accused of using library images from different times and locations in Britain and other parts of the world to portray the UK riots as ‘the uprising of the oppressed against the British monarchy’.”
One of the images that Fars News Agency used was from a miners’ strike in Chile, showing police in riot gear chasing protestors, with a Spanish language road sign in full view. At least one of the photos is an old shot from a UK paper describing security plans for a European Champions League soccer match between Manchester United and Glasgow Rangers. The photo, taken in 2010, of a man with blood on his face has very little to do with an imaginary uprising of the British populace.
A picture showing policemen was actually taken from a carnival in Notting Hill, London, in the year 2008. The Iranians also used old coverage from protests and strikes. Obviously the oldest photo hails from 1984.
Unfortunately, the Iranians do not have a monopoly on using questionable illustrations to drive home their point. Even the western media have at times used misleading images in covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For instance, a very well known image was said to describe a Jewish policeman towering above a blood-covered Palestinian boy, ready to strike him. However, in reality the boy was Jewish and the policeman had just rescued him from a Palestinian mob who could have killed him, if the policeman had not intervened.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Man the media is a joke home and abroad good work sir.Yes, sometimes. Thanks for reading.
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