IMHO the coverage has been poor primarily because 1) It doesn’t fit a left-leaning media narrative 2) Foreign influence 3) MSM is too lazy to send many foreign correspondents actually there to report. So we get a spew.
I too peruse social media and internet but information is bits and pieces and hard to verify
In one of his memoirs, Charles Kuralt describes getting to the scene of a potential coup in a capital in provincial Brazil in the early '60s. For a week, he used a shortwave radio to transmit his reporting to CBS daily. At the start, Kuralt paid a cab driver a lot of money to drive hundreds of miles to Uruguay to send Kuralt's telegraph to CBS, letting them know which frequency he was using for transmission. It worked, and Kuralt got an enormous scoop.
Now, American reporters can just open their phones to make and transmit their reports; but how many of them are on the ground in Iran, Venezuela, or Brazil?
They're too comfortable in their chairs behind their keyboards. The whole country is coming off the 'work from home' stupidity. Reporters are no different.
Independent journalists must continue the relentless striving toward more widespread coverage. Build the context and editing in to the extent possible. Waiting for the legacy media to report is futile. Keep up the good work Gerald.
I hear you, but as you point out, it’s not just the peril of war which is prohibitive, but the hostility of the regime. Hopefully Iran rediscovers itself, throws off the mantel of mullah suffocation, and returns to a real democracy. I don’t judge or blame the global media for being afraid to cover this populist insurrection.
You may thank CIA and MI6 for the overthrow of Mosadegh in 1953, followed by the installation of the Sjah, leading to the theocracy in 1979. The current situation is also a consequence of the sanctions that the west has imposed.
On the arabic spring: that wasn’t organic either. It was supported and sponsored by the usual suspects, to create a color revolution in Egypt. Similar is happening in Iran. When does the USA stop being the police of the world, bullying everyone, meddling in foreign affairs?
The majority supports the current regime, how many do you want to see being killed because you want to save a minority? Never those suffer that are behind these developments l. Most likely they benefit.
Here in the US it was finally gaining traction but once the Venezuela story hit, mostly silence.
Many powers in the region don't want to hear it because they see it as taking away from the anti-Israel aspect they want to put forward.
Then there's all the other reasons you've mentioned. Difficulty covering the story from such a closed society, real threats to those that even try from several directions, and many more.
Not to mention that many in the media seem to have become lazy.
"Iran's food inflation reached 64.2% in October, according to the World Bank, the second highest level in the world after South Sudan. The rial has lost 60% of its value since the June war with Israel. Iran has failed to clinch a deal with the U.S. over its atomic program that could have helped alleviate some of the stress sanctions have placed on its economy."
I have been an admirer of your reporting and insight since "Warlords of Crime" about Chinese Triads and a history of drug trade. A septuagenarian on a very fixed income, I can't afford a paid subscription at this time. Grateful for your ongoing work.
Spot on about the vacuum problem. When legacy outlets go sporadic on something as massive as regime-level protests in a nuclear threshold state, people default to whoever's streaming from the ground, and half the time there's no way to verify what's real. Had this exact experience tracking labor strikes in Bangladesh last year where Twitter threads became the primary source because nodoby else bothered showing up. The comparison to Cairo 2011 nails it because the excuses for thin coverage today (danger, verification issues) existed back then too but somehow didn't stop wall-to-wall reporting when the narrative fit.
I do think you’re infantilising the audience a little. It isn’t up to media outlets to spoonfeed people or hold their hand as they navigate the geopolitical world - it’s up to the audience to spend literally five seconds Googling different (mainstream) sources.
I also think it should be said that many British Iranians have Iranian TV news channels in their homes (usually opposition and state ones) so they will absolutely know what’s going on.
IMHO the coverage has been poor primarily because 1) It doesn’t fit a left-leaning media narrative 2) Foreign influence 3) MSM is too lazy to send many foreign correspondents actually there to report. So we get a spew.
I too peruse social media and internet but information is bits and pieces and hard to verify
In one of his memoirs, Charles Kuralt describes getting to the scene of a potential coup in a capital in provincial Brazil in the early '60s. For a week, he used a shortwave radio to transmit his reporting to CBS daily. At the start, Kuralt paid a cab driver a lot of money to drive hundreds of miles to Uruguay to send Kuralt's telegraph to CBS, letting them know which frequency he was using for transmission. It worked, and Kuralt got an enormous scoop.
Now, American reporters can just open their phones to make and transmit their reports; but how many of them are on the ground in Iran, Venezuela, or Brazil?
They're too comfortable in their chairs behind their keyboards. The whole country is coming off the 'work from home' stupidity. Reporters are no different.
Independent journalists must continue the relentless striving toward more widespread coverage. Build the context and editing in to the extent possible. Waiting for the legacy media to report is futile. Keep up the good work Gerald.
We found Tousi TV on YouTube showing the revolution
I found that, too, but I don’t know who they are.
Get over to Iran and cover it! Why are you leaving it to someone else?
I hear you, but as you point out, it’s not just the peril of war which is prohibitive, but the hostility of the regime. Hopefully Iran rediscovers itself, throws off the mantel of mullah suffocation, and returns to a real democracy. I don’t judge or blame the global media for being afraid to cover this populist insurrection.
You may thank CIA and MI6 for the overthrow of Mosadegh in 1953, followed by the installation of the Sjah, leading to the theocracy in 1979. The current situation is also a consequence of the sanctions that the west has imposed.
On the arabic spring: that wasn’t organic either. It was supported and sponsored by the usual suspects, to create a color revolution in Egypt. Similar is happening in Iran. When does the USA stop being the police of the world, bullying everyone, meddling in foreign affairs?
The majority supports the current regime, how many do you want to see being killed because you want to save a minority? Never those suffer that are behind these developments l. Most likely they benefit.
Here in the US it was finally gaining traction but once the Venezuela story hit, mostly silence.
Many powers in the region don't want to hear it because they see it as taking away from the anti-Israel aspect they want to put forward.
Then there's all the other reasons you've mentioned. Difficulty covering the story from such a closed society, real threats to those that even try from several directions, and many more.
Not to mention that many in the media seem to have become lazy.
so go to Iran and start reporting.
From the WSJ. Serious trouble afoot.
"Iran's food inflation reached 64.2% in October, according to the World Bank, the second highest level in the world after South Sudan. The rial has lost 60% of its value since the June war with Israel. Iran has failed to clinch a deal with the U.S. over its atomic program that could have helped alleviate some of the stress sanctions have placed on its economy."
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-warns-iran-against-shooting-protesters-efd580ea?st=nERD67
I have been an admirer of your reporting and insight since "Warlords of Crime" about Chinese Triads and a history of drug trade. A septuagenarian on a very fixed income, I can't afford a paid subscription at this time. Grateful for your ongoing work.
Small protests Mr. Posner not exactly a revolution. Considering your shite book on JFK hard to take you seriously
Spot on about the vacuum problem. When legacy outlets go sporadic on something as massive as regime-level protests in a nuclear threshold state, people default to whoever's streaming from the ground, and half the time there's no way to verify what's real. Had this exact experience tracking labor strikes in Bangladesh last year where Twitter threads became the primary source because nodoby else bothered showing up. The comparison to Cairo 2011 nails it because the excuses for thin coverage today (danger, verification issues) existed back then too but somehow didn't stop wall-to-wall reporting when the narrative fit.
This article seems pretty reliable and balanced to me.
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/1/4/sporadic-protests-in-tehran-as-clashes-reported-in-irans-west
I do think you’re infantilising the audience a little. It isn’t up to media outlets to spoonfeed people or hold their hand as they navigate the geopolitical world - it’s up to the audience to spend literally five seconds Googling different (mainstream) sources.
I also think it should be said that many British Iranians have Iranian TV news channels in their homes (usually opposition and state ones) so they will absolutely know what’s going on.
I just did a Google News search and found Guardian, Sky, BBC and Al Jazeera stories all from the last 24 hours, at a glance.
I’m not sure you can call that a vacuum.
Also, I expect coverage to grow next week when newsrooms get back to full strength after the festive period.
Of course, if you think there is a gap in the market, you could always go to Iran yourself.
I just went on BBC and indeed focused on the protests as economic. I had to do a search to find anything at all.
It’s literally the second item on this morning’s BBC R4 Today programme, with detailed coverage twice every hour.
Nope. I went through 5 pages with nothing about Iran. I guess this article was more important than Iran.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj9y43mv332o
If only there were some way to search…