15-Feb-11: Iran - how the local and foreign and social media see things... differently

More clashes, more protests, and now death in the streets. But don't expect the Mullahs of Iran to acknowledge that any of this is happening. Like yesterday, we have three snapshots below, all of them focused on Tehran, all of them captured at about the same moment today. The entirely different senses of what's happening are another reminder of how editors and reporters can, at will, fashion a reality that is completely disconnected from actual events while serving an ideological agenda.

First the New York Times.

Now our friends from the Iranian-state-owned PressTV who know Breaking News when they see it:

Iran's gift to the world of round-the-clock news coverage is breathless when it comes to news breaking in Bahrain and Cairo and Tunisia. But they're struck completely dumb when the subject is the tumult on the streets of their own capital, with masses getting up and standing for their long-stolen rights.

And finally a Twitter picture, one of many that are finding their way out of Iran and into the social networks today.

Iran is "the most active state sponsor of terrorism. Iran’s financial, material, and logistic support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia had a direct impact on international efforts to promote peace, threatened economic stability in the Persian Gulf and undermined the growth of democracy." [Source - August 2010].