Iran's Media Have a Point

The Iranian media's coverage of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Monday in New York was typically skewed. There were lies, distortions, and propaganda.

Some of the reporting was outright false, not unlike stories found in the American media by CBS and the New York Times.

Although I am in no way endorsing any of the policies of Iran, I admit that some of the commentary on Ahmadinejad's visit was fair.

TEHRAN, Sept. 25 -- Iranian state television on Tuesday sharply criticized the way President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been treated during his Columbia University talk and asserted that he had triumphed over his adversarial hosts, whom it described as Zionist Jews.

Commentary, interviews and video broadcast in Iran of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia on Monday depicted a resolute leader who overcame an ambush of personal insults to present his views on topics like the Holocaust, Israel, the Palestinians and nuclear weapons, views that were described as having been well received by the audience.

“In the end, who was the winner?” asked one television commentator, leaving the answer to a quote from John R. Bolton, a former American ambassador to the United Nations and an outspoken Iran critic, who said Mr. Ahmadinejad was the “big winner” for being able to talk at the university.

The evening news showed scenes of the large crowd that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s talk had drawn inside and outside the university. “Mr. Ahmadinejad was the center of the world news for the past few days,” said the reporter.

“Some media even called on students to boycott the speech,” the reporter added, saying that instead Mr. Ahmadinejad got a warm welcome.

The program repeated scenes that showed the audience cheering Mr. Ahmadinejad, suggesting that a lot of the audience was made up of his supporters. “I saw even Jewish students who walked out of the talk saying Mr. Ahmadinejad was very convincing,” a woman wearing a head scarf told the program in English.

It also pointed out that the president of Columbia, Lee C. Bollinger, had made insulting remarks, without elaborating on them. Mr. Bollinger had said that Mr. Ahmadinejad exhibited “all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” and that he was “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

The television broadcasts also showed video of the audience booing Mr. Ahmadinejad when he said there were no homosexuals in Iran. It added that a protest was orchestrated by a Zionist lobby that had brought schoolchildren.

Mohsen Rezai, a former head of the Revolutionary Guards, denounced on the state-run news channel the inhospitable treatment of Mr. Ahmadinejad. “He is the president of a country,” he said. “It is shocking that a country that claims to be civilized treats him that way.”

Obviously, Iran's media have an anti-Israel agenda. That should come as no surprise.

It's also no surprise that Ahmadinejad would be depicted as bravely and triumphantly standing up to the Zionist Jews.

Regarding the denouncements of how the Iranian president was treated by his hosts at Columbia University, I agree with the assessment that Ahmadinejad was subjected to personal insults that were most definitely inhospitable.

That's not to say that I disagree with what Bollinger said about Ahmadinejad.

However, I don't think it was appropriate for the leader of a foreign country to be invited to a prestigious American university only to have its president rip him to shreds.

How could that have been avoided?

AHMADINEJAD SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN INVITED TO SPEAK AT COLUMBIA.

If President Bush had been invited to speak at a university in Iran and if prior to his address, the university's president had berated him the way Bollinger berated Ahmadinejad, I would consider that offensive and an insult to all Americans.

It was wrong for Bollinger to slam Ahmadinejad the way he did.

If Bollinger and Columbia University didn't intend treat Ahmadinejad with at least some degree of respect and civility, then the Holocaust denier, anti-Semite, liar with the blood of Americans on his hands should not have been invited to speak in the first place.

...“New York is the headquarters of Zionist Jews, and they have control over Columbia University,” he said. “It seems that our diplomacy apparatus had not given complete information to the president.”