Golnaz Esfandiari writes:

The Western media certainly never tired of claiming that Iranians used Twitter to organize and coordinate their protests…Even the American government seemed to get in on the act. Former U.S. national security adviser Mark Pfeifle claimed Twitter should get the Nobel Peace Prize because “without Twitter the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confidant to stand up for freedom and democracy.”

But despite this, Esfandiari says the manager of “Balatrin,” a hugely popular Farsi-language website, told the Washington Post that the impact of Twitter within Iran was “nil.” Nothing. The Twitter frenzy, he observed, was mostly Americans tweeting among themselves.

But if Twitter was not a large communication tool, then what was? Simple: “good old-fashioned word of mouth was by far the most influential medium used to shape the post-election opposition activity.”

Esfandiari also brings up a Twitter user whose media coverage I remember well: Oxfordgirl. Britain’s Guardian described her as a “crucial link” between protesters and the outside world, but the reporters did not ask how Oxfordgirl communicated with Tehran when cell phone networks were down during protests. Oxfordgirl generated a great deal of publicity, yes. But for whom? Mostly herself, it would seem.

The article makes a valid point in saying that “no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.” This was a question that crossed my mind as I avidly followed election coverage, but no one seemed to address it.

Yet for all the criticism of the Twitter revolution that never was, it would be unfair to say Twitter did not play a role. Of course it did. But its role has been grossly overplayed and Esfandiari’s article is right in pointing it out. But one of the best points in the article comes at the very end:

And ultimately, that’s been a terrible injustice to the Iranians who have made real, not remote or virtual, sacrifices in pursuit of justice.

By playing up the role of Twitter, we play down the role of those Iranians who have made greater contributions. And that is, indeed, an injustice.

The award is of historic journalistic merit, for the network video of the dying of Neda Agha-Soltan, from a bullet wound suffered at a protest in Tehran last June. Right up there with the Pulitzer Prize-winning photos by Eddie Adams of the spontaneous street execution of a Viet Cong prisoner in 1968, and John Paul Filo of the Valley Daily News & Daily Dispatch of Tarentum and New Kensington, Pennsylvania, of a student mourning over the body of a murdered student protester and Kent State in 1970.
.
But “anonymous”? Unprecedented. Important.

“Anonymous,” surely plural, were the people who recorded the death scene, uploaded the video to the Internet, and spread it, almost instantaneously, to the world. The award might be, “in a way, a kind of backhanded recognition of the fact that neutral platforms like YouTube and Facebook can actually disseminate news — news in the raw — in addition to being just social networking,” says John Darnton, the new Curator of the Polk Awards, which has just announced its awards for 2009. It may be the ultimate acknowledgment of the news business’ growing, and contentious, resource, in what is widely described as the citizen journalist.

Darnton recalls the deliberations of the Awards Committee, which recognized the drama and impact of the video: “Isn’t that the definition of news?. Something that gets people talking and thinking and reveals something?” Yet, “we all talked about it for quite a while because we’re giving this award at a time when the professional status of journalists is kind of under assault, in a way. By people who think anyone can go out “there and just report on things.”

“I don’t think its brain surgery,” concedes Darnton, who won two Pulitzers himself as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, “but I do think it’s a craft that’s developed over time and includes certain values. As an award program we’d like to uphold those values. We want to pay honor to them, so in this case it went against our grain a little bit, but it is also our way of saying we’re in a new kind of world.”

He does take umbrage, though, against the term “citizen journalist.” “If you’re walking down the street and somebody collapses in front of you and somebody else runs over and administers CPR because they happen to know it, and saves the victim, you wouldn’t go home and say you saw somebody saved by a citizen doctor. You’d say you saw someone saved by a bystander who happened to know CPR. Right?

“Same thing here. I like to call them bystanders — not journalists. Just good bystanders.”

Darnton acknowledges the importance of the amateur bystander’s contribution to the information flow, as observational journalism. accumulating force behind the idea that the “web is the wave of the future, we don’t need newspapers, print is dead, newspapers are arrogant, dinosaurs, etc. It becomes a very emotion-laden argument. But there’s something that they don’t notice, and I wonder if you have: All of what they might call scoops, on the web” — he cites the casually overheard: Trent Lott’s praise for Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, George Allen’s macaca remark, Obama’s scorn for the rednecks in Pennsylvania — “All of them have one thing in common, and that is their way of knocking people down. In that sense they’re exposés: You catch people saying incredibly stupid things. Gotcha.”

That’s all news, occasionally of genuine consequence, to be sure, occasionally also unchecked, wrong, and harmful . But the success of the quick-and-easy, sensational, superficial, and cheap of the new media may mask the urgency of the quest for new ways to preserve the values of the old., Darnton believes. “These are not the same as discovering that there’s a program of extraordinary rendition, or wiretapping without court order — the stories that should rock the country to its constitutional foundation.

“It’s almost a different game, so what we have to do is get the web onto the stories of real substance that involve digging and working and money and time and resources. That, I say, is the major problem confronting American journalism today” Absent solution, “who knows, maybe over time consumers will kind of lose the ability to discern what is quality and what isn’t.”

So far, “people still want quality journalism,” Darnton contends, with enthusiasm. The question is: Do they value it enough? How can it be funded? Through what model?

###

Video: “Neda Iran”

Bill Rappleye has spent the last 60-plus years in journalism. Read more about him here.

This time around however the joke appears to be on Iran. According to a recap at the Atlantic, Charles Davis, a freelance journalist and blogger at the website Dissident Voice, penned a satirical, fake news piece yesterday titled “EXCLUSIVE: Obama Orders Air Strikes on Guantanamo Bay” (if you need a laugh, it’s a fun read). The “report” was picked up by Iran’s state TV Press TV, which has an office in Washington, who called Davis to verify the story. This from Davis:

Being a bit of an asshole, I of course responded by sending my Google Voice number. About five minutes later I received a call from ‘Sarah’ in Tehran, who conducted a fact check of my piece consisting of the question: ‘Is it credible?’ Again, being a bit of an asshole, I assured her my sources were second-to-none and that the credibility of the piece was not in doubt, prompting her to invite me to appear on *LIVE* television in an hour. I naturally accepted.

He also apparently provided a photo of “19th century mustachioed Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata” which may have alerted Press TV that all was not as it seemed — the interview, alas, did not end up running. However, perhaps the Onion should consider sending a regular shipment to the Press TV offices, just to give them some practice.

I went over to bitly.tv and these were two of a number of #IranElection-themed videos — unverifiable — but sadly timed to Sunday’s flare-up again of protests in Iran against the oppressive regime, and the crackdown of those protests in a sad and scary echo of last June (but at the worst possible time for the West’s attention span in the middle of the holidays). Borthwick’s observation about CNN notwithstanding, the #IranElection tag continues to stay strong on Twitter (649 new tweets in the last 5 or so minutes), including from influential tweeters like Alyssa Milano with 546,188 followers.

This next video is one that has been seen already across the web and TV the past week (including CNN), of a car backing up over a protestor (hard to watch, be warned). After that is a video called “Iran Interviews That Will Never Air” (there is a translation, as well as debate about the videos authenticity, in the comments). Both are reminders that a lot of what happened in 2009 will still echo on into 2010, both for good and ill. That is especially apparent in the unfolding story of #IranElection. Hopefully in 2010 the good will start to weigh out. Until then, what can you do but pay attention? See below.

“Readers keep emailing me to tell me that as far as cable news is concerned, today’s events might as well be happening on Mars. I cannot confirm this because when real news happens, the last place I look is the cable news channels. But I cannot say I am surprised. Since this does not have a cheap and easy way to splice into the red-blue fight, they have no idea of how to cover it.”

– Andrew Sullivan, responds to reader’s complaints about how much coverage the escalating conflict in Iran is currently mustering on the mainstream cable outlets.

So why is there less coverage this time around than there was in June when #iranelection swarmed Twitter for a week causing even the State Department to take notice? Obviously Sullivan is not alone in his habit of looking for real news in places other than cable TV. And it should be noted that this week’s clashes in Iran was the New York Times front page lead yesterday and additionally was noted in Obama’s statement to the press yesterday, something he notably did not do back in June.

However, Iran has definitely not taken over the news cycle, and the public’s imagination, the way it did back in June. This despite there arguably being more video available than there was six months ago. Is it merely bad timing? In June Iran was wiped off the cabler’s by Michael Jackson’s death. This week it faces a country and a news cycle (if not necessarily a president) consumed with an averted terror attack. And rightly so.

Yes, Thursday’s thwarted attempt to explode a plane happens to be tailor-made for cable TV, however it’s also a big deal. Arguably, more so because of what it has revealed about the holes is the TSA than anything Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab actually did. Also the fallout from the new security restrictions, are being felt daily, nationwide, by almost everyone. All combined it’s a hard news story to beat. But fear not, #iranelection remains a trending topic on Twitter, meaning that even if you’re not seeing it on your television set, plenty of people are still discussing and reporting. In the meantime, if you’re looking for good coverage may we suggest following ABC’s Lara Setrakian who is based in the Middle East and is excellent, and Jon Leyne at the BBC. Note: Please read comments for additional suggestions.

“Death to the dictator!” the crowds reportedly chanted, according to witnesses and web reports. As he did over the summer, Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan is chronicling the bloody action at his Daily Dish blog, complete with graphic photos and a barrage of tipped information. Quotes and YouTube information are also being posted frequently.

Via the Times:

The police then opened fire directly into the crowd, opposition Web sites said, citing witnesses. At least four people were killed, the Web sites reported, and photographs circulated of a man with a bloodied head being carried from the scene.

One of the dead was Ali Moussavi, Mr. Moussavi’s 35-year-old nephew, the Parleman News Web site reported. He was shot near the heart at midday in Tehran’s Enghelab Square, the report said.

Protesters successfully pushed the police back in some areas, hurling rocks and capturing several police cars, which they set on fire. Videos posted to the Internet showed scenes of mayhem, with dumpsters burning and groups of protesters attacking Basij militia volunteers amid a din of screams.

But the most fascinating media aspect of the Iranian clashes is the continued resurgence of the Twitter movement. The trending topics list currently includes #iranelection, a catch-all hashtag, in addition to #CN4iran, “designated by Chinese twitter users offering support to the Iranian uprising,” according to a Daily Dish reader, even though the service is blocked in China.

Times blog The Lede is also running extensive social media coverage.

It has never been easier to keep up with a revolution, detached as it may be.

(photo via Andrew Sullivan)

Here’s the email that landed in my inbox early this morning (which I at first mistook based on the subject line ‘Security in the Digital Age’, to be a missive from Nigeria).

The White House, Washington

Dear Friend,

Cybersecurity matters to all of us. Protecting the internet is critical to our national security, public safety and our personal privacy and civil liberties. It’s also vital to President Obama’s efforts to strengthen our country, from the modernization of our health care system to the high-tech job creation central to our economic recovery.

The very email you are reading underscores our dependence on information technologies in this digital age, which is why it seemed like a fitting way to announce that the President has chosen Howard Schmidt to be the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator. Howard will have the important responsibility of orchestrating the many important cybersecurity activities across the government.

Howard is one of the world’s leading authorities on computer security, with some 40 years of experience in government, business and law enforcement. Learn more about Howard’s background and approach to cybersecurity:

Watch the Video

Howard will have regular access to the President and serve as a key member of his National Security Staff. He will also work closely with his economic team to ensure that our cybersecurity efforts keep the Nation secure and prosperous.

Moving forward we will use WhiteHouse.gov, this email program and our other communications tools to keep you posted about our progress in this important area.

Sincerely,

John O. Brennan
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism

P.S. You can play an important role in cybersecurity as well. Learn more about the issue and steps you can take to ensure your own security.

A bit more on Schmidt, who may or may not now be the person closely following your Twitter. He has had a 40-year career including local and federal government service, as well as a post as vice chairman of President George W. Bush’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. He also was “for a short time an adviser to the FBI and worked at the National Drug Intelligence Center” and is a former eBay and Microsoft executive. Also? He said yes to the job after “a rocky selection process that dragged on for months, as others turned the job down.” Hard to imagine why.

For some strange reason I might feel better about this selection had they plucked some twenty-something from Silicon Valley (maybe because this picture looks like it came out of some Nixon-era archive). Or not. Either way, it’s probably good someone is there to handle the turning on and off of the Internet, perhaps he can keep the Russian hackers away from Twitter from now on.

“Mainstream media have been accused of pathologizing the African-American male, but — let’s face it — three men who happened to be black moved a lot of units this year. Just try to imagine this past year in media without President Obama, Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods.”

– The New York Times’ David Carr looks back at a year in media.

Instead of noting all the colossal failures the industry has suffered in the last twelve months, Carr opts for the sliver of sunshine, particularly the ones that come in 140 characters or less (Carr would know!).

“And lest you think it was all pathology and politics, it is worth noting that on Twitter, the elections in Iran outranked Michael Jackson, who came in second, according to What the Trend?, a site that ranked topics in 2009 (whatthetrend.com/zeitgeist). In an age that is ridiculed as chronically unserious, a life-and-death struggle for freedom on the other side of the world is the story that rang the bell on Twitter.”

Carr also notes the rise of real reporting on sites like Gawker, and HuffPo and television shows like Mad Men and 30 Rock as signs that the media apocalypse has not yet arrived. As to what the future might hold it’s really anyone’s guess (12 months ago would you have suspected that the Iran Revolution would have been Twitterized?) but Carr suggests you should be polite to your juniors just to be on the safe side.

The WSJ reported yesterday that Ahmadinejad spends 15 minutes a week updating “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Personal Memos” where he “he goes to vent and stay in touch with the common folk.” On the one hand this is particularly galling considering Iran’s treatment of reporters and bloggers and its vicious crackdown on protesters last June who were desperately attempting to reach the world with news of what was happening through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. On the other hand, is it really a surprise? Of course a man desperate to control his own message is on the Internet. Next we’ll discover he’s also on Twitter. In fact some of his recent UN statements strike as very Twitterable, though perhaps not in the tone intended.

Anyway, according to the WSJ the Farsi version of the blog has not one negative comment on it (the fact it allows comments at all is sort of amazing), no doubt Ahmadinejad either employs strict comment monitors or people are just too scared to say what they really think. The English-language version(!) apparently has plenty, though as of this morning I couldn’t access so maybe its servers were unable to handle the excess attention. Stay tuned.

One of Jones’ subjects happened to be Maziar Bahari, the Newsweek reporter who was shortly thereafter kidnapped and jailed during the protests and held captive for 188 days. Bahari was finally released last month – just in time for the birth of his first child — and this week’s Newsweek cover story is devoted to his recounting of his time in an Iranian prison where he was interrogated and beaten. Here’s where it gets equally interesting and terrifying: Was The Daily Show in part to blame for Bahari’s imprisonment?

Here’s what Bahari writes in Newsweek about the “interesting video footage” his interrogators produced as evidence he was a spy :

“Well,” said Mr. Rosewater, who had been fairly quiet up to this point, “we have interesting video footage of you. That may persuade you to be more cooperative.” I could not imagine what that might be. Something personal? Something that might compromise my friends? But…I reminded myself I had done nothing wrong.

I saw the flicker of a laptop monitor under my blindfold. Then I heard someone speaking. It was a recording of another prisoner’s confession. “It’s not that one,” said the second interrogator. “It’s the one marked ‘Spy in coffee shop.’ ” Mr. Rosewater fumbled with the computer. The other man stepped in to change the DVD. And then I heard the voice of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

Only a few weeks earlier, hundreds of foreign reporters had been allowed into the country in the run-up to the election. Among them was Jason Jones, a “correspondent” for Stewart’s satirical news program. Jason interviewed me in a Tehran coffee shop, pretending to be a thick-skulled American. He dressed like some character out of a B movie about mercenaries in the Middle East—with a checkered Palestinian kaffiyeh around his neck and dark sunglasses. The “interview” was very short. Jason asked me why Iran was evil. I answered that Iran was not evil. I added that, as a matter of fact, Iran and America shared many enemies and interests in common. But the interrogators weren’t interested in what I was saying. They were fixated on Jason.

“Why is this American dressed like a spy, Mr. Bahari?” asked the new man.

“He is pretending to be a spy. It’s part of a comedy show,” I answered.

“Tell the truth!” Mr. Rosewater shouted. “What is so funny about sitting in a coffee shop with a kaffiyeh and sunglasses?”

“It’s just a joke. Nothing serious. It’s stupid.” I was getting worried. “I hope you are not suggesting that he is a real spy.”

“Can you tell us why an American journalist pretending to be a spy has chosen you to interview?” asked the man with the creases. “We know from your contacts and background that you told them who to interview for their program.” The other Iranians interviewed in Jason’s report—a former vice president and a former foreign minister—had been ar-rested a week before me as part of the IRGC’s sweeping crackdown. “It’s just comedy,” I said, feeling weak.

“Do you think it’s also funny that you say Iran and America have a lot in common?” Mr. Rosewater asked, declaring that he was losing patience with me. He took my left ear in his hand and started to squeeze it as if he were wringing out a lemon. Then he whispered into it. “This kind of behavior will not help you. Many people have rotted in this prison. You can be one of them.”

As I said, at the time those clips aired I found them non-funny and borderline offensive — fake news tends to lose its thrust when real news reporters (and civilians) are risking their lives to do get the actual news out to world. Even now they are cringe-inducing. But beyond that — wow has the Internet made the world small. The idea that The Daily Show, such a very American product, is not only accessible to someone in Iran, but could be used a proof to imprison one of its subjects is the somewhat terrifying flip side to the coin that brought the world #iranelection via Twitter. Also, boy do we take our freedom of media for granted, both what we watch and what we put online. One can’t help but wonder whether this is an early warning sign that one day soon we are all going to have to be aware of and responsible for the far-flung ramifications of what we choose to post on the Internet. Bahari’s Daily Show appearance below.

Last month Fathi penned a piece for the NYT about how Iran journos were fleeing the country in droves and we noted that “judging by the byline on the dateline (Toronto), the NYT’s own journalist in Iran may have been part of the mass exodus.” Turns out she was. The Toronto Star has picked up the story.

Understandably, Fathi didn’t want to insert herself into the story. In fact, it’s a story she never wanted to write. But in many ways, hers is the story of Iran’s recent spiral into lawlessness and, perhaps worse, hopelessness. It’s also the story of how, with depressing regularity, Canada is becoming a safe haven for the world’s exiled journalists. It’s not easy monitoring events from 10,000 kilometres away. But covering Iran from Toronto is still easier than it was in Tehran when Fathi was holed up in her apartment, watched by security agents, her phone and Internet connections compromised.

The article also details the circumstances that lead to Fathi’s departure from Iran:

Fathi was the last Times reporter left on the front lines as activists and dissidents were rounded up, interrogated and tortured. Among them was another Iranian-Canadian dual national, Maziar Bahari, Newsweek’s reporter in Tehran until he was picked up in late June at the height of the unrest. Bahari, 42, was released a month ago after his family posted bail. He remains in exile in Britain.

And who can forget the torture and death of yet another Canadian dual national, photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, in Tehran in 2003, which has strained bilateral relations ever since. Against that backdrop, Fathi took the warning signs seriously. A surveillance team took up position outside her family’s apartment, as Basiji thugs and Revolutionary Guard enforcers wrested control of the streets from idealistic protestors.

Whenever there were protests, “I kissed my children” before going out, Fathi told me. Later, one of Fathi’s old government sources alerted her that a sniper would take her out if they could ever identify her in public. “I stopped going out … I was practically under house arrest.” One day, the surveillance team followed her husband and children in four vehicles, then cut him off suddenly and approached their car. It was time to go.

Hard news comes at a hard price, and with the departure of Fathi (among many others) it would appear that both the public and major news outlets are now even more dependent on the sort of citizen journalism we saw last June for first hand accounts of life in Iran.

“Our hotel was then hit by a rocket, at least 3 rockets hitting central Kabul.”

The Iran election and the subsequent protests, which took place back in June are starting to feel like another lifetime. Not a surprise considering President Ahmadinejad’s brutal crack down on both the protesters and the press. Today the New York Times reports on what life is like now for journalists remaining in the country. One short word: brutal.

The editors of some opposition blogs, which reported the killings and the mass burial of protesters, have gone into hiding, and their whereabouts are not clear. The homes of some journalists, like Mr. Maleki, have been ransacked.

Mahmoud Shamsolvaezin, a veteran journalist and media expert in Tehran, estimated that 2,000 Iranian journalists had lost their jobs recently. He said about 400 of them had approached him for reference letters so they could get work abroad. “Journalists are leaving more than other groups because the government has closed newspapers and it has intimidated and terrorized them,” he said in an interview.

Side note: Judging by the byline on the article (Nazila Fathi) and dateline (Toronto), the NYT‘s own journalist in Iran may have been part of the mass exodus. As we noted back in June, Fathi was the Times eyes on the ground during the protests and the fact she is filing this story from Toronto suggests she too was able to make a safe exit from the county.

Sometime overnight, (around 4am, judging by the buzz on my TweetDeck), the Times‘ David E. Sanger broke the story that President Obama — along with the leaders of Britain and France — intend to “accuse” Iran of “building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international.” From the article:

President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France will accuse Iran Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years, according to senior administration officials….American officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project

.

This is enormous news. Enormous. So much so, one imagines it will not only “overshadow the meeting of the Group of 20″ as the Times suggests, but will likely knock the health care debate off the front pages for the next few days at least. Between this and the “serious” terror plot case happening in New York City right now (see A-1 print edition) scary international news may have returned to rule the headlines after a summer domestic news topping the agenda. Also, when the President tells reporters not to give him to much grief over his “jackass” remark because he’s “got a lot of other stuff on my plate” he really means it! Alas, too bad Glenn Beck can’t also use his powers (such as they are) to get international politicians to resign.

This is the second time this week big Middle East news has been broken by the traditional media. On Monday the Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward penned an exclusive account of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s 66-page report to the President, which warns that more troops will be needed in Afghanistan if the U.S.’s policies there are to succeed. Following this news was the news that the Post had delayed publication of the story for one day a the request of the Pentagon.

Two lessons here: One, newspapers still have the clout, wherewithal, and trust to do the digging and get the really big, really important stories. Two, the fact I feel it’s worth noting that the traditional media has broken not one, but two really big stories this week probably says more about the state of newspapers than six months worth of bad advertising numbers.

Bahari was arrested under trumped-up charges back in June whilst covering the Iran protests for Newsweek. Shortly thereafter Newsweek called for his release, to no avail. In August, after Bill Clinton’s headline grabbing trip to North Korea, Newsweek again highlighted Bahari’s detainment at the hands of the Iranian’s (along with the fact he and his wife are expecting their first child this fall). Again to little avail.

On Saturday, Meacham took to the op-ed pages of the New York Times to make his case ahead of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s visit to the UN at the end of the month, perhaps in an effort to reach a wider, more connected audience. The Times may be weakened and struggling but it’s hard to argue it still top dog when you want people to listen up. From his editorial:

Mr. Ahmadinejad is likely to be greeted by protesters in New York, and as usual, he will dismiss them. But this year the real protest should take place inside the chamber, with governments condemning the arbitrary and unjustified detention of a foreign journalist. If Iran wants to be taken seriously on the world stage, it needs to adhere to international standards. Journalists need to be free to report within the legal framework of the country. Foreign governments need to be granted consular access to their citizens. Prisoners need to be granted access to their lawyers, and either charged or released quickly.

And despite his efforts — in speeches, news conferences, town-hall-style meetings and other forums — to address public misgivings, 69 percent of respondents in the poll said they were concerned that the quality of their own care would decline if the government created a program that covers everyone.

But losing to what exactly? Health care is a tough topic to sell on any day — it’s detailed, unwieldy and not at all sexy, all terrible qualities where cable coverage is concerned. However you’d think in a slow news July it might get a bit more traction. Instead what we have been getting is the Birthers, and discussions over what type of beer the President prefers. Is that about to change?

Sort of. At least one of these stories promises to dominate today: At 5pm the President will be meeting Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. Crowley (and probably most of the White House press corp.) for the much-hyped “Beer Summit.” But today also marks the 40 day anniversary of Neda’s death. Neda, you may recall, was the young Iranian woman whose death at the hands of Iranian police during last month’s sweeping election protest was captured on video and watched around the world, sparking outrage and quickly becoming a powerful symbol for the protesters. Rallies are being held in Iran today to mark it — rallies that Neda’s mother has apparently been banned from attending. ABC’s Jim Sciutto appears to be Twittering from the ground there at the moment and reports that: “Crowds chanting ‘death to the dictator’, others saying ‘Neda isn’t dead, the regime is.’ ”

Swampland’s Michael Scherer wrote an excellent post the other day about silly summer news and “the continuing, fascinating, slow, gradual turmoil in Iran.”

The story in Iran, in other words, appears to be far more interesting and uncertain than it was even was a few weeks ago, when all the Twitter caricatures turned green and CNN went wall-to-wall.

One wonders if today’s protests will be enough to knock the Iran storyline back into the headline space it occupied prior to being knocked out by the death of Michael Jackson. It would certainly be a nice break from the Birthers and the Poetry of Palin.

McLuhan: The Medium was the Message in Iran

Amidst all the journalistic gatekeeping and blogger ballyhoo over whether or not the White House seeded a question, the coverage has largely neglected to ask why we got here in the first place: because the medium was message.

What medium and what message?  The social media that gave shape to the Iran election crisis set the stage for what happened in the June 23, 2009 White House Press Conference.

If the Iran election crisis had not been so thoroughly intertwined with new social media, the White House would not have reached out (seeded, elicited, whatever) and then asked Pitney a question, Milbank would not have criticized Pitney, and nobody would have created the Twitter hash tag “#dickwhisperer.” The “medium” of the Iran election crisis really was “the message,” and that was not merely one reason the White House sought out Pitney — it was was a huge reason.

In the days prior to the his press conference, as the President watched the Iran crisis unfold, someone if not everyone in the White House must have realized that all traditional broadcast media would soon be cut off by Ahmadinejad.  The only way to get an unfiltered message from to the Mousavi supporters would be to somehow leap into the white-water rapids of the Twitter coverage — to take Obama’s enormous political cache as a global figure and use it to create a ‘push’ in the social media, a wave of momentum and hope amidst the ebb and flow of Tweeting moving in and out of the protests.  And so, the idea must have been hatched to get a message out to the Iranian people by taking aggressive steps to insert the President directly into the medium of the protests via an unorthodox press room maneuver.

It was a brilliant move by the Obama White House for several reasons.

Even if Obama did not want to formally back Mousavi, by asking Pitney for a question from the Iranian people that he collected via Twitter and the blogs, Obama implicitly endorsed the medium and message of the Mousavi protests.  By bringing the key Iran coverage aggregator (Pitney) onto the White House stage, Obama gave voice to the very movement Ahmadinejad sought to silence. It was brilliant political theater and while it did not lead to a turnabout in Iran, it stuck a knife in Ahmadinejad’s side and let the world know that the White House was not a dinosaur that shuts down the presses when people are communicating via cell phone.  This was a U.S. President who “gets” the medium driving change on a global scale.  This was a U.S. President who reads what bloggers put out there.  Ahmadinejad, by contrast, came across as a petulant Grand Inquisitor: brutal in his ways and brutally out of touch with contemporary ways of doing politics.  From the grave, McLuhan applauded the White House.

Jefferson: A Free Press Must Be Independent

Having been asked to dance with the President so the White House could walk a delicate line between diplomacy and political manipulation, the Huffington Post — fairly or unfairly–was tripped up by the tangled ethical web that now constitutes the relationship between the press and government.

To understand these ethics — what is right or wrong in this situation — we are compelled to return to Jefferson’s compelling principle that a free press is one of the crucial pillars of our Democracy.

Here, we have to say that the bone of Milbank’s contention was sharp, but misguided.  The ethical question was not whether Pitney allowed the White House to seed a question, but under what circumstances does the ongoing interaction between the press and the executive branch of government diminish our ability maintain the principles of a Jeffersonian free society?

As Pitney’s defenders have pointed out, the previous administration cultivated a kind of interaction with the press that significantly undercut Jefferson’s principles.  In particular, when the time came for the American public to inform themselves about whether or not an invasion of Iraq was warranted, the White House had so co-opted the national press corp that the media coverage was unable to provide citizens with the basic information they needed to make informed decisions.

In response to that breakdown, the blogsphere emerged as a counterbalance to what was widely seen as a national media that had lost its way during the Bush administration — for good and for bad.  Rising out of the ashes of a free press was a new citizen-driven, open source media that, while only occasionally capable of generating the initial fact line of a story, was extremely nimble at ferreting out political manipulation and forcing counterpoints into the headlines.

Largely free from the institutional constraints and salaries of formal journalism, bloggers became a much needed check and balance to help re-establish a free press that could, in the Jeffersonian sense, help citizens inform themselves and make decisions.

Multiple mid-term elections and an historic presidential campaign later, bloggers are a lot more institutionalized than they once were.

The Huffington Post in particular, with readership numbers that can compete against most major media outlets, now occupies a gray zone between institutional journalism and new media. And like it or not, Huffington Post is now faced with the very same ethical questions concerning interaction with the White House that tripped up traditional journalism just a few short years ago.

Conclusion: Stepping Up to Civic Leadership

As all but a few producers at CNN have figured out by now, the solution to the spat caused by the White House pushing a blogger to the front of the press room is not to stage on-air shouting matches between supposedly “old” and “new” media. Keeping in mind that the truth is sometimes factual and sometimes philosophical, there is truth to both sides of the debate between Pitney and Milbank.

The solution is for everyone to stop hiding behind the pretense of gate keeping, on the one hand, and naivete on the other.

If formally trained reporters would stop drawing a chalk circle around the word “journalist” just so they could push bloggers outside of it, then they could finally realize that a healthy civic sphere in the year 2009 requires a few evolutionary steps forward in the idea of the quaint Jeffersonian conception of the “press.”  In an era where politicians have become nimble at manipulating the press, we need voices in the media who concern themselves with preventing the damage politics can cause to the civics. That does not mean journalism dies. It simply must grow.

Likewise, bloggers who already have a foothold in the grand-daddy of all plum assignments — the White House Press corp — and who have far-reaching and varied access to government and broadcast media at all levels, need to stop pretending that just found a way in the back door. If the Iran election protests teach us anything it is that bloggers are firmly at the core of politics and media on a global scale and now is the time for bloggers to show leadership on big civic questions.

Of course, so long as shouting matches make good ratings, both journalists and bloggers may have a hard time stepping up.  But the time is now and the talent is there to drive the public sphere forward.

Jeffrey Feldman is the author of Framing the Debate (Ig Publishing, 2007), Outright Barbarous (Ig Publishing, 2008), and founder of Frameshop, the influential blog on politics and language. He holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, which he applies to the analysis of speeches, media, and campaigns. An influential voice both on and in the media, Dr. Feldman is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, has appeared on PBS, MSNBC, and Air America, and can be seen frequently on CBC Newsworld.

In total, Iran occupied 19% of the newshole, while Jackson coverage reached just 18% after the #IranElection head start. PEJ aggregates media from cable and network TV, online outlets, print and radio to formulate it’s study.

But didnt’ it feel like there was more MJ coverage? Well maybe that’s because on cable TV, and TV in general, the amount of coverage was far skewed toward the King of Pop. 93% – yes, 93% – of cable coverage on Thursday and Friday was occupied by Jackson and related stories. Compare that to just 37% of front-page coverage in print on Friday (and 55% of online coverage).

Another chart found in the PEJ study looks directly at Jackson coverage by industry. Cable news was the winner hands down – with more than 35% of its weekly coverage devoted to MJ. Network TV had approximately 20%, followed by online, newspapers and radio all around 10%.

Gov. Mark Sanford had to be happy with the study – it found just 11% of the news coverage was devoted to his Argentinian love affair, enough for the bronze of the week.

The amount of Iran coverage may have severely dropped off on cable TV, as they’ve become Access Hollywood in the wake of the recent high profile celebrity deaths. But when looking at all of media, the Iran story has not gone away. Some who have complained about the sensational coverage could take solace in that.

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What is also hard to miss here is the byline: ‘A Time Reporter in Tehran.’

At this point even the most casual news consumer is likely aware that it is increasing difficult and dangerous to get verified news out of Iran and that many mainstream news outlets have come to depend on Twitter and Facebook and the like for on-the-scene (and still unverified) reports. What’s interesting in this case is that Time has chosen in this byline to refer to the anonymous contributor as a ‘reporter’ and the followed up with this clarifier:

On June 23, Iranian security forces, reportedly using live ammunition, clashed with protesters numbering in the hundreds in the area of the country’s parliament in Tehran. At the same time, there were indications that a behind-the-scenes struggle was intensifying in the corridors of power even as the government continued its campaign to quiet the populace through propaganda and entertainment. A resident of the capital, who asked for anonymity, sent TIME the following report: [Emphasis ours]

That last line suggests that the ‘reporter’ in question is less a reporter, as we have come to understand the term as it is normally applied at Time, than a citizen journo as we have come to understand the term as normally applied in the online world. This is far from a criticism, mind you! We want the news from Iran, as and people accustomed to getting ‘news’ from any number of outlets this strikes as the norm, particularly as the Iran story unfolds. And perhaps the source is in fact a Time reporter in Iran, though the caveat makes that seem less than likely.

Perhaps there a MSM lesson to be found here? Something along the lines of if the MSM doesn’t find social media it will eventually find them.

The two networks left MSNBC in the dust. NBC’s cable outlet was busy showing “Lock Up” episodes and other doc block repeats, with only sporadic updates on the Iran situation.

When it comes to Total Viewers, MSNBC couldn’t compete. Fox News finished first, with the highest-rated hour of the weekend coming at 8pmET on Saturday, in a Shepard Smith-anchored program.

Calling in Fox News’ fairest-and-balanced-est superstar was the right move, and showed the network’s commitment to the international story.

The gravitas of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour helped the network’s ratings as well, winning the 7pmET hour in the A25-54 demo, in which she contributed heavily. In fact, TVNewser reports CNN won every hour in the demo from 10am-6pmET.

In Total Viewers on Saturday, FNC was a clear #1, CNN #2 and MSNBC in 3rd. During prime time, HLN topped MSNBC for 3rd place.

On Sunday, it was a slightly different story. While the gold, silver, and bronze remained the same in Total Viewers, the doc block proved more popular on Sunday, with MSNBC finishing in 1st place during prime time while a close 3rd in total day.

Still, whether it was the ground swell of new media pushing for more coverage or a conscious decision in the hallways of the News Corp. building and Time Warner Center, the decision to make Iran a priority proved successful.

There are often questions raised, and rightfully so, whether Americans care about international issues that don’t concern them. In this case, they flocked to the networks who could satiate their need for live, up-to-date coverage. And everyone won (well, maybe except those San Quentin inmates on MSNBC).

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Host Jon Stewart introduced last night’s clips by stating the obvious: “Obviously the situation in Iran is fluid, and very dangerous, and much more fluid and dangerous than we thought it was going to be when we sent Jason Jones there. So, while he had gone to Iran in pursuit of a comedy piece, he met some people who were in pursuit of there of much more.”

The segment featured pre-taped interviews with three Iranians who have been arrested since, some who are currently detained, and the parody played up the “danger” of these peaceful individuals:

After the segment, Stewart attempted some tongue-in-cheek comedic questions with the son of one of the men in the piece, Ebrahim Yazdi, who is still in jail. It didn’t play. And then it got serious:

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The Rohde piece is less of a mystery. Considering multiple news organizations knew of Rohde’s situation over the last seven months one imagines the story of his capture has been written, and re-written in anticipation of his release (or other endings we’d rather not dwell on). The Tehran, however dateline bears some examining.

As has been noted in numerable news outlets the number of journalists in Iran is quickly dwindling. For the few who do remain the conditions are increasingly perilous. Times managing editor Bill Keller himself noted last week that Roger Cohen (whose excellent column this past weekend is an absolute must-read) would shortly be the last English language speaking writer in the country…and that was last week (Cohen is still there as of this writing). Making the question of who penned Sunday’s news item even more curious.

Those who have been following the Times coverage of Iran these last weeks can’t have helped but have noticed Nazila Fathi‘s (often shared) byline on most of the reported pieces, accompanied by footnotes at the end of the articles affirming she is the one reporting from Iran so the disappearance of her name from yesterday’s piece was arguably cause for concern. Had her byline been removed as a precautionary measure for her own protection? Had she left Iran? Was the Times depending on stringers? (It’s worth noting the majority of the reported pieces bearing the byline filed in the last year have come from dangerous locales such as Myanmar and Iraq.)

What confused matters more was the reappearance of Fathi’s byline this morning alongside Alan Cowell (who has been contributing from London and Paris all week). A person with knowledge of how these things work suggested to us that Fathi may have been detained for the day, or perhaps was out the city altogether. But that’s just speculation. What is clear is that reporter’s lives are increasing in jeopardy as the regime cracks down — by some estimates only the BBC and AP have people left in the country — and particularly in light of Rohde’s captivity, not to mention CurrentTV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee who are still imprisoned in North Korea, news organizations are taking any and all possible precautions to keep their people as safe, and under the radar, as possible.

While not exactly original, this week’s most popular headline was certainly on point: The revolution, aka the ongoing unrest in Iran over last week’s questionable election results, has been burning up Twitter with people inside and outside the country tweeting and retweeting in a constatly-updating sea of green.On Monday night, “The Revolution Will Be Twittered” got 70,400 hits (though Tuesday morning it adjusted way downward to 11,600, perhaps because so many of those were variations on Andrew Sullivan). But after a week of Twitter use being an inextricable part of the ongoing crisis in Iran, Google seemed decided: As of late Friday afternoon, “The Revolution Will Be Twittered” registered a whopping  10,100,000 hits.  Headlines featuring the words “Jon” & “Kate” came in a close second.

Keller’s byline first appeared online Saturday evening and then again as an A-1 story in the Sunday print edition and has since popped up intermittently in the international section. Some people seemed to find this disconcerting, despite Keller’s highly respected career as a foreign and Pulitzer prize corespondent (for covering the collapse of the Soviet Union) there has been over the last week a sense of ‘how dare he?’ as though it is somehow inappropriate for Keller to temporarily shrug off his managing duties (of it must be said, a seemingly slowly sinking ship). The phrase “danger slut” was employed. So what? He’s old, he should stay in his room? He’s hogging the front page? Okay fine. But our immediate reaction (admittedly in the afterglow of the The Daily Show‘s segement was akin to a sigh of relief that the man running the world’s preeminent newspaper* continues to understand, first hand(!) the importance of foreign bureaus, and first-hand reporting, and the danger that sometimes goes in hand with both. Anyway, aren’t all foreign reporters, past or present, danger sluts?

Keller emailed E&P‘s Joe Strupp to explain his position.

I’ve had a few bizarre vibes from people outside the NYT who are puzzled by my presence in Tehran. Do people in the media crit game really think editors are supposed to be desk jockeys who never go get a sense of the story? (When I was a correspondent I had visits from Max Frankel and Joe Lelyveld, among others, and welcomed them as a chance to share my enthusiasm for the beats I covered.) Or is the idea that when a big, exhausting news breaks visiting editors should hole up in the hotel and let the reporters do all the work? Weird.

Indeed. Or perhaps just sour grapes (does green with envy qualify as supporting Democracy in Iran?) At any rate, Keller also was quick to give props to his fellow reporters in Iran who were working their “hearts out” and noted that IHT‘s Roger Cohen, who has a slightly longer visa may be “the only English-language opinion-writer still actually in Iran.” You can read Keller’s full email here.

* This is an argument for another post.

All this week The Daily Show is featuring the very same Jason Jones “live” from Iran; you may have seen one of his early (and arguably less stale) pieces last Friday. The Times reported this development on their Arts Beat blog under the hed “Daily Show Sends Reporter to Iran.” Dig a little deeper however and you will soon realize that it’s not so much ‘sends’ as sent.

Turns out Jones actually did go to Iran “over 10 days in late May and early June” during which time the reports were taped. Which is great! We think it’s great when fake news providers follow the lead of expensive, serious ones, with real foreign bureaus (for now) and actually travel to the source! Albeit 10 days too early to catch the action, or say, reunite with Times managing editor Bill Keller who has been filing stories from there this week, under increasingly difficult circumstances. But ‘fun’ news nonetheless. And no doubt, profitable. Also? Aged.