Ahmadinejad Censored, Distorted in US Media
60 Minutes Interviewed Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad a couple of years ago. They cut some key passages out of the interview.
I've made the same point at Informed Comment in the past.
It is legitimate to decry his positions, and I decry a lot of them. It is not legitimate to misrepresent what he has said.
By the way, Nazila Fathi at the NYT again today attributed to Ahmadinejad the phrase "wipe Israel off the face of the map." He didn't say it, and spoke of the regime. He quoted Khomeini saying, "This occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." (Een rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az safhih-i ruzgar mahv shavad; the verb construction mahv shodan is intransitive). (Khomeini had said 'vanish from the arena of time.') He has explained that he meant that the Zionist regime would collapse just as the Soviet one did. He didn't threaten to wipe anything off anything.
Fathi and her editors know all this.
Fathi is either a liar or was forced into this falsification by an editor who is a liar.
The Iranian press has acknowledged that I am right on this issue.
See also Jonathan Steele.
Do write the NYT complaining about this wilful and dangerous mistranslation.
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/20/2008 12:02:00 AM
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8 Comments:
Some of us have been pointing this out for so long now but McCain's postmodern campaign has made truthiness really unfashionable it might be worth seeing if it can be squeezed out of some areas that it has been lurking. Good idea!
Ahmadinejad wanted a debate; what on earth has a free society got to hide. It really, really would be a good idea if we could sort out our differences with the Iranians without a war.
Why do you feel the need to have to add a "disclosure" saying you disagree with many things the Iranian leader says? Are you afraid if you don't add that sentence, you will be called Anti-Israel? Come, on, be braver than that !!!
What a crazy censored world we are all forced to live in.
Regarding Iran and media distortions and ommissions, here's an interesting recent quote from an impeccable source which has been entirely ignored by the press:
Dr. Thomas Fingar
Chairman, U.S. National Intelligence Council
Q & A following keynote address (pdf)
4/9/2008
"There is an approach to government – and this will sound strange but the Iranians actively have a better-functioning democracy than Pakistan does. We may not like who they elect. It may be a distorted process by the way in which people are vetted before they can run, but it’s actually pretty free and fair elections once they get to that point, and they have some authority afterwards." (emphasis added)
I couldn't support you more on your quest to get get the "wipe Israel off the map" line acknowledged as a lie. (BTW, it's not just the NYT; Wallace uses the same phrase in the bit of interview you linked us to -- and in the part that wasn't cut.) But I'm not sure 60 Minutes actually did Ahmadinejad a disservice by cutting this "democracy" bit. It's open to interpretation, but Israelis and their US supporters would undoubtedly interpret a referendum allowing Palestinians to choose whatever form of government they desired as a right to vote Israel out of existence. That's hopefully not what he meant, but I'm not sure they did him harm by cutting it.
In a recent interview with PressTV, Ahmadinejad for the first time explicitly rejected these claims too:
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=69866§ionid=3510302
Please help spread this as well.
When even the translation posted by MEMRI does not say "wipe Israel off the map" - but rather: "This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history" - as Jonathan Steele notes, the translation issue surely can be taken as solved!
In the same speech, Ahmedinejad cites Khomeini's statement that "Saddam must go" as another parallel - and the fulfillment of the Ayatollah's prediction through American actions: a further indication that no specific mechanism of change is envisaged.
Dear Juan,
Ms Nazila Fathi also presents a very distorted view of the latest IAEA Report (she quotes "to make any substantial progress" totally out of its context). I have placed a Comment regarding this IAEA Report on the Comments page of the following Informed Comment article by professor Farideh Farhi:
http://icga.blogspot.com/2008/09/iaea-declares-gridlock-with-iran.html
BF.
Dear Michael Pollak,
With regard to the Wallace's 60 Minutes, you might like to watch the following video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onNzrNEFs1E
BF.
Thank you, Professor Cole, for your diligence on this matter.
Arash Norouzi of the Mossadegh Project thoroughly exposed this media lie well over a year ago in his piece Caught Red-Handed: Media Backtracks on Iran's Anti-Israel 'Threat'
It is no longer feasible for the media to claim ignorance..any continued use of this misquote is quite simply, deliberate deception.
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