Irish Times Continues to Misrepresent Iranian 'Threat'

international | arts and media | other press Thursday July 12, 2007 19:19 by M Cotton & D Manning, MediaBite - MediaBite editors at mediabite dot org

Why is the IT ignoring the fact that Iran's nuclear enrichment activity is entirely legal?

Iran is not in contravention of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (which the US is) and yet Iran stands accused of being a serious danger to the region - even though the most 'optimistic' projections say they are at least ten years from any possibility of developing a single nuclear bomb, if such a goal is even their intention. As compared to the gignatic arsenal of world-annihilating nuclear capability that the US already posseses, it is more than ironic that Iran should even have to begin to account for itself in the cirucmstances - let alone account for itself to the US.

We wrote to the Irish Times Editor to query its latest account of Iranian nuclear enrichment activity:

"Madam

The Reuters-sourced report in today's edition of the Irish Times (12 July 2007) of the talks held with UN representatives yesterday, makes no serious attempt to put the accusations against Iran into their proper context.

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0712/bre...2.htm

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is quoted exclusively in a defiant context without proper acknowledgement of the verifiable Iranian assertion that their nuclear enrichment activities are not in breach of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. This issue continues to be reported in the Irish Times as if this was not the case. The carelessness in your coverage results in marked bias in favour of the US perspective.

Compounding the bias, the report goes on to say:

"Diplomats say the United States and its European Union allies believe Iran 's offer of transparency may be little more than a bid to buy time and avert further UN measures."

Why should this unattributed, speculative observation from anonymous sources be included in the article at all if not to emphasise the notion that Iran is guilty as charged when all the evidence shows that the opposite is the case? Surely, in the interest of fairness, it should have been accompanied by an Iranian response to the accusation? As it stands it is as meaningless as it is misleading.

We wrote to you on the 4th of July to point out similar misrepresentation in a Guardian article reproduced in the Irish Times. Meanwhile, Ed Pilkington of The Guardian has written to us to agree that referring to 'Iran's nuclear weapons programme' as if it were proven to exist was misleading. He has amended the online version of the paper. So far we have had no acknowledgment from the Irish Times of our letter and your online version continues to carry the article as originally written - even though the Guardian itself has corrected it. Is this deliberate?

http://members.boardhost.com/mediabite/msg/1183413900.html

With deaths as a consequence of Western interventions in the Middle East now approaching a million, surely the Irish Times should pay stricter attention to the possibility of inadvertently helping to build a false case for another unwarranted and deadly war?

Yours sincerely
Miriam Cotton
(& David Manning)
MediaBite"