After seven years of reading absurd newsreports and bad reporting, three relatively short sentences in a caption of a set of images “Unseen Iran” ticked me off. Here’s the byproduct which I happily forwarded not two minutes ago to those responsible– hopefully I won’t groan about this five days from now. Meh.
Picture Stories ( ss_060302_iran ) a systematic problem?
Dear sir or madam,
I just wanted to inform you that as a regular subscriber to your news, recently I have noticed a marked degradation in the quality of the reporting on your site. This is specially pertaining to stories that I have read on Iran which seem infused with not only bias but factual inaccuracies, poor research, and poor narration, qualities which I would expect a reputed source such as yourself would not ascribe to.
A few minutes ago I stumbled upon the following infuriating caption in one of your pictures “Iranian girls celebrate after winning a softball game in Tehran in March 2005. Softball is relatively new sport in Iran and has become extremely popular with young women. Women rarely play sports because of difficulties presented by the hijab, or veil, they wear. Women are banned from attending many men’s sporting events.”
Reading this I could not help but contemplate whether the writer and/or editor who has chosen to plant this caption beside the image has the slightest idea about the condition of women in Iran, or whether they malevolently and willfully chose to spread ignorance and blatant misinformation.
For one, softball is NOT a relatively new sport in Iran, certainly it has not enjoyed as much popularity among Iranian young women such as games like volleyball, basketball and football (soccer) in the past two decades, however in terms of a sport, and it certainly has existed and has been well-played. Iranian sports and Iranian culture has not been as ‘isolated’ from a global influence as the wording in this caption and others on the site seems to suggest. Secondly, your claims that women are banned from attending “many men’s sporting events” are questionable at best. As I recall, and a short Google search reveals, other western news media sources have reported that there have been reports of women beings prohibited from attending certain games in Iran’s national/international football (soccer) arenas, however, reports also follow-up with recent reversals or speculated reversals on these discriminatory policies. Meanwhile, the fact stands that though not all, women freely attend many national sporting events. It seems however that your agency deems it necessary to propagate outdated, questionable and partial information as completely valid…
What I found most infuriating, perhaps, is the comment on the ‘fact’ that women in Iran “rarely play sports” due to difficulties presented by the hijab. Your statement is disputed by even the most basic statistics coming out of Iran. In Iran women are extremely active in the arenas of sports and academics, with national medals and top honors in rallying (equivalent in popularity to the NASCAR sports event in the United States) and many other sports being awarded to women. In academics, considering the fact that today in higher education women in Iran hold a portion larger than 50% of the populace of students in natural sciences and engineering, with a significant portion of women in professorship and tenure positions compared to the West, I would even say that in some respects Iranian women are faring better than their Western counterparts. Women do play sports in Iran, at prestigious and competitive levels as opposed to what your ‘enlightened’ writer has suggested. As with many other women in the Muslim world, some mandated by their personal choice and others by governmental policy, Iranian women wear the hijab, consisting of a head covering, as well as non-revealing clothing in tournaments and competitions. However, in contrast to what your writer has suggested to readers (who unfortunately may not know better) Iranian women take part in sports rather than “rarely play sports” and actively take part and hold prestigious positions in other activities within Iranian society ranging from academia to politics to the arts.
I hope that in the future your agency chooses a more responsible and factual approach to reporting because I sincerely doubt that I am the only individual left dissatisfied and disappointed. Until then, you have lost the trust of this single reader.
- Marzieh Ghiasi
