US media replaced Iranian history with a repetitive loop of reductive cultural stereotypes
Evidence
If one were to read the Chicago Tribune on November 18 — a longish piece by James Yuenger citing experts who say that “this is not something up for rational discussion” or that Iranians “hunger for martyrdom” and have “a tendency to look for scapegoats” — and then either Time or Newsweek the week after, and the several features in the New York Times the week after that, one would keep coming up against the information that Iranians are Shi’ites who long for martyrdom, led by a nonrational Khomeini, hating America, determined to destroy the satanic spies, unwilling to compromise, and so forth. Were there no events taking place in Iran before the embassy takeover that might illuminate things? Was there no Iranian history or society to write and speak about that wasn’t translatable into the anthropomorphisms of a crazy Iran gratuitously taunting good-guy America? — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 263
Categorization
- XREF: The ‘crazy Iran vs. good-guy America’ anthropomorphism connects directly to Said’s own Orientalism thesis and to Chomsky’s manufacturing-consent critique of expert citation.
Related
- Media reattributed the Iranian situation to timeless Muslim traits rather than real causes (similarity 0.80)
- A prolonged crisis forced the US media into more self-critical coverage of Iran (similarity 0.80)
- Media coverage of the crisis ignored Iran’s actual modern political history (similarity 0.79)
- Western commentators ignored religious politics in Israel and America while condemning Iran’s. (similarity 0.78)