IRNA Chief critique of western media double standards

Khoddadi made the remarks in a meeting with a Spanish media delegation touring IRNA. The delegation included mediapersons from El País magazine, el Diplomat Magazine, and La Razón newspaper.

He said that unfortunately sometimes the media avoid reporting fair news because of financial benefits. 'Take situation of Yemen for example: It is a country 40% of whose territory have access to electricity under normal conditions. It is for more than two years that Saudi Arabia is bombarding Yemen. How many flash news coupled with well-worked out analysis have you observed to have been presented by the key international media to deal with massacre of Yemeni people and consequences of the bombardments?'

'Is Yemen not bombarded and its people are not killed or such catastrophes do occur but related news are censured on demand of certain countries?' Khoddadi further questioned.

Khoddadi referred to the distinctive political and social conditions of Iran compared to those of many regional countries and said stiff competition and high public turn out in election(s) are indicative of the pluralistic nature of the votes, active participation of the media and public orientation towards the media.

Referring to “hope” as the most important achievement of the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for Iranian people, Khoddadi said, “Although nowhere in the universe, including Iran, successes are absolutely 100 percent, people feel the country is progressing and government will keep by its promises. Right due to the same reason, people gave overwhelming majority of votes to Hassan Rouhani again.”

To a question on condition of the social networking in Iran, Khoddadi said, “Many social networks in Iran are accessible and Iranians use them. For instance, telegram, instagram, WhatsApp and Line are highly frequent social networks in Iran.”

Asked about terrorism and extremism, Khoddadi said, “Iran has always been pioneering campaign against terrorism. Mr. Rouhani, Iranian president, called for international consensus against extremism several years ago. I invite you to make a research on root causes of creation of al-Qaeda, Daesh, al-Nusra Front and other extremist and terrorist groups and see who provided money, arms and training and even propaganda facilities for them in the beginning.

When Iran called Saddam a criminal, many countries supported him. Taleban, which was an ally to al-Qaeda, assassinated 16 Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan. In a period of time, 17,000 Iranians fell victims of the terrorist grouplet Mujahideen. That time, nobody in Europe and the US felt danger of terrorism. However, today, the public opinion has become more aware.”

The Spanish media delegation on Sunday met IRNA Chief and toured IRNA Newsroom, being kept abreast of news production and broadcast in Farsi and other languages.

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