Posts tagged : "Media"

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: Media headlines these days are invariably dominated by developments surrounding the global outbreak of COVID-19 that first surfaced in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and was declared a “pandemic” by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020. The deadly virus, which shares many symptoms with regular influenza, has affected over 2oo countries and territories, claimed nearly 132,000 lives and has triggered unprecedented shutdowns, cancellation of events and gatherings, confined students and clerical workers to homes and prompted many governments to impose national quarantines. SARS-CoV-2 is the name given to the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 is the disease associated with...

Kourosh Ziabari - Lobelog: “Throughout history the secret to success has been love, freedom, and justice. … Building a better tomorrow filled with freedom, justice, and love is the goal of every nation. We should all strive to achieve this goal. … The search for freedom, justice, peace, and security is only possible if there is freedom of choice. … Liberty cannot be limited, confined, or negotiated. It is a common human principle.” These words are not parts of the UN Charter or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They are excerpts from tweets posted by Iran’s former firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the course of past months. Ahmadinejad’s comments inarguably earned him renewed public attention at a time...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Miniature painting is a genre in Persian and Indian art that has survived the passage of time. Indo-Persian miniature painting, a common heritage of the two nations, was originally an artwork adorning text that reached its climax of glory during the 15th and 16th centuries. Miniature paintings illustrate religious, mythological or literary themes and plots. In the 17th century, miniatures mostly depicted love scenes and, in the 18th century, shifted to portray flowers and birds. Ambreen Butt is a Pakistani-American miniaturist and painter born in 1969 in the historic city of Lahore. She has been called a “leader in revitalizing the centuries-old form of” miniature. Butt received her...

Kourosh Ziabari - Al-Monitor: A prominent Iranian TV commentator's move to the United Kingdom to join an opposition station after a long career at Iran’s state TV has revived a longstanding debate over the public approval of IRIB, the sole national broadcaster holding a monopoly over domestic radio and television services in Iran. Mazdak Mirzaei is a 48-year-old soccer commentator and TV show host who has moved to the UK to work with Iran International, a London-based TV channel launched in May 2017, which is believed to be funded by a “secretive offshore entity and a company” whose director is a Saudi Arabian businessman with close ties to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Iran International regularly features guests...

Kourosh Ziabari - Medium: I chose an early career in journalism by virtue of my journalist family: my parents have been running a local weekly magazine in northern Iran for some 20 years now. Although I can’t say that I regret my choice of becoming a journalist, I should confess this industry has hit a stalemate in my country and those who remain committed to it are almost automatically following the advice embedded in one of the famous poems by Rumi, a 13th century Iranian Sunni poet and jurist who said, “I am not to give away your painful feeling; Or to quit loving you till the day I’m kneeling. Your only souvenir is a whole lot of hurting; Still, I won’t replace it with a certain healing.” Aside from not being well-paid,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Stony Brook Independent: It is difficult to give a vivid picture of Iran’s media and their popularity through figures and statistics. Few studies have been done in this regard, and Iran’s media, including state TV broadcasters and radio stations, newspapers, news agencies and online publications have hardly been successful in surpassing their London or Los Angeles-based competitors in satisfying the varying needs of their audience and their thirst for professional coverage, honesty, fair and accurate reporting and “good news.” It is arguable that Iran’s media have failed the test of legitimacy, as excessive intervention on behalf of the government to manipulate the media content and influence their coverage...

Kourosh Zibari: David Barsamian, a leading Armenian-American radio journalist, believes that as a result of the good performance of alternative press, young Americans don’t pay attention to the propaganda of the corporate, mainstream media anymore. David Barsamian, who is the founder and director of Alternative Radio broadcast from Boulder, Colorado, says the journalists in the United States don’t need to be censored or monitored by the government, because they are accustomed to a full-fledged self-censorship. Mr. Barsamian says that the US government orchestrated a large project of media propaganda against its own people to rationalize and justify its illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq: “f course the case of Iraq is very instructive...