Saturday, February 7, 2009

Between the Headlines

Iran's PressTV program "Between the Headlines" goes through a few major headlines from around the world to give an Iranian response to the topics. Today's program singled out four major stories including the The New Statesman article All of Us Live by the Logic of Finance and the Economist's, That Curious Relationship about a British resident and Ethiopian citizen, Binyam Mohamed, who alleges that he was tortured by American agents. According to the Economist, British courts decided they could not publish a summery of these events publicly because "America would retaliate by withholding vital intelligence in future, thereby placing Britain at risk." The anchors discussed in full, America's use of torture in Guantanimo Bay and whether the media will pressure stories like this to come out so that such circumstances could never happen again. Interesting that such human rights topics comes up and the correspondents seemed so concerned about the truth coming out about the U.S.'s torture allegations when Iran itself isn't exactly a poster child for human rights. One of the guests did feel it necessary to note that this torture happened during the Bush administration, not the Obama administration, "and we all know what the Bush administration was about." I would have loved for him to elaborate.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting choice of sources -- both The Statesman and The Economist are popular British publications. It would be interesting to see if this is typical, or the show draws from different publications (and from different countries) in other episodes.

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  2. I definitely felt the "Britishness" of the program topics but was waiting to see a couple more episodes to see if this is a trend.

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