When the news broke out on the Iranian uprising and the regime’s brutal crackdown, I asked my mother if she’s heard from our family. She told me she had a difficult time understanding the news.
Having left Iran following the 1979 revolution, I wonder how much of my mother’s unknowing is a result of a genuine distrust of all media. In her experience, media is a tool to disarm and threaten a population into submission, a conduit to the government's fascist agenda in order to maintain control of the people.
As Middle Easterners, we know all too well how the media weaponizes our peoples’ suffering as political rhetoric for government interest. Our grief is exploited for talking points or leveraged for foreign military intervention—or utter inaction in the face of a humanitarian crisis.
We also know how our own disunity is fueled by misinformation, with many of us in the Iranian diaspora vehemently debating solutions in the absence of knowledge, our stances clashing while we wait to hear from family. We share posts promulgating from sources that we don’t trust published from countries we don’t believe. Our news is understood through grains of salt.
In recent weeks, stories about Iran’s communications blackout filled my media feeds. Among others in the Iranian diaspora, I know what can hide in a government’s shadows. When communication is doused and the world can't witness, we speculate from ominous silence. We just didn’t know the scale of horror.
Lately, I scan international and local media sources for emblems of truth. At a moment when facts matter more than political talking heads, our media sources spew propaganda and tired threats from world leaders here and afar.
I’m inundated by sensationalist journalism, political vitriol, and the digital noise that erupts when citizens are silenced. I want knowledge—not the editorializing of trauma.
I tuned into KALW’s Your Call on January 16th for a discussion on Iran’s communications blackout and lethal crackdown on protests. The segment was starkly devoid of western pontification and sound bites from speeches that plague the media surrounding the Middle East. Instead, the dialogue among policy excerpts and journalists focused on Iranian eyewitness testimonials and trusted resources. I left with glimpses of truth beneath widespread media and political chaos.
While mass media focuses on our leaders’ disorientating messages and inaction, independent media provide facts and impartial analysis.
In his essay “Junk Media and Corwardice,” James Kass writes how junk media “chips away at our ability to discern truth from noise. It flattens the complexity of human experience into headlines and hashtags. It makes us impatient, cynical, and mistrustful.”
As I try to make sense of Iran's uprising through a smokescreen of news sources, I experience the harmful impacts of today’s politicized media landscape. The media flattens the loss of lives into rhetoric and division. It makes us distrustful of solidarity efforts when they don’t align conveniently with our own beliefs. It grows hatred out of fear and disillusionment in the absence of information. Media can reduce a country’s tapestry of ethnicities, religion, and politics as the narrative of an individual.
I wonder how Iran’s humanity could be seen beyond headlines and towards a place of truth and understanding.
The communication blackout in Iran continues still, into late January. Accounts of the regime’s unprecedented massacre are being shared from verified videos and human rights institutions. Suddenly the rumors we’ve seen through a closed lens are verified. The Iranians we do hear from through intermittent technology plead for those with a voice to amplify what they’ve encountered for the world to witness and take action.
On January 26, Your Call’s follow-up segment on Iran covered the regime’s atrocities and its ongoing blackout, quoting Amnesty International: “This blanket internet shutdown not only hides human rights violations, but amounts to a serious human rights violation in itself."
In my role at KALW, I develop institutional messaging around the importance of independent, factual, and unbiased media in our everyday lives. I’m realizing that my role is more personal than drafting fundraising copy; I’m working to sustain a critical independent media ecosystem that helps connect people to their community and their family members who may not have an outlet to share their truth.
Right now, my work is literally hitting home. I’m seeking unfiltered journalism to gain knowledge and share what’s happening in my family’s country. As Iranians continue to mourn our losses and are unable to reach relatives, independent media and shows like Your Call act as a voice for the voiceless, channeling their stories, tragedies, and dreams.
This essay is about my experience with the failure of the media and Iran, but currently, ICE is terrorizing communities across the nation. Venezuelans are protesting or celebrating U.S. intervention in their country. Israel’s deadly onslaught on Palestinians has continued with near-daily attacks.
As our communities’ suffering deepens, we're increasingly divided, misinformed, and disorientated by a toxic or silent media. The role of independent media is to break through the noise and help make sense of our world through informed dialogue, vetted resources, and trusted testimonials. To bring cohesion through the discord.
When knowledge is contested and our reality is censored, media can help develop a collective understanding for the communities who need it most.
At its best, independent media is a voice for those silenced by their governments, or for those who never had a chance to share what they saw.
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This piece was brought to you by KALW Speaks, a monthly series of essays from KALW staff and contributors, exploring the ideas that drive our work. Each of these essays reflect our commitment to innovation and invites you into a deeper conversation about the future of public media.
Learn more: From A Whisper To A Roar.
