Friday
Sep042009
Iran: Satire Becomes "News" - Ahmadinejad's Ayatollah and Prisoner Rape
Friday, September 4, 2009 at 11:25
The Latest from Iran (4 September): A Friday Pause?
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Amidst the current debate about gathering and disseminating news beyond the "mainstream" media, a lesson comes out of a false story on Iran.
Yesterday EA staffer Chris Emery noted a story on Israel National News that Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, widely labelled as the key religious advisor to President Ahmadinejad, said last month that "coercion by means of rape, torture and drugs is acceptable against all opponents of the Islamic regime". In a question-and-answer session with followers, Mesbah Yazdi went into graphic detail in his permission to rape, concluding,
The Israeli outlet gave no source for its story, and it has been known to run less-than-verified claims. So our judgement at EA was "How far away are we staying from this?!" Other sites, however, eagerly ran the piece, and it is now enshrined on Wikipedia.
The story is false. Chris Emery did some more digging and found that it had been posted at Balatarin (a portal like Digg and Newsvine for Internet articles) three weeks ago in the "Fun/Entertainment" section. The original story has now been pulled, because so many people mistook it for reality, but a quick read of the Balatarin version (even with the shaky English offered by Google Translate) makes clear that this was a bit of very black comedy gone very badly wrong.
Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis
Amidst the current debate about gathering and disseminating news beyond the "mainstream" media, a lesson comes out of a false story on Iran.Yesterday EA staffer Chris Emery noted a story on Israel National News that Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, widely labelled as the key religious advisor to President Ahmadinejad, said last month that "coercion by means of rape, torture and drugs is acceptable against all opponents of the Islamic regime". In a question-and-answer session with followers, Mesbah Yazdi went into graphic detail in his permission to rape, concluding,
If the judgment for the [female] prisoner is execution, then rape before execution brings the interrogator a spiritual reward equivalent to making the mandated Haj pilgrimage [to Mecca], but if there is no execution decreed, then the reward would be equivalent to making a pilgrimage to [the Shi'ite holy city of] Karbala.
The Israeli outlet gave no source for its story, and it has been known to run less-than-verified claims. So our judgement at EA was "How far away are we staying from this?!" Other sites, however, eagerly ran the piece, and it is now enshrined on Wikipedia.
The story is false. Chris Emery did some more digging and found that it had been posted at Balatarin (a portal like Digg and Newsvine for Internet articles) three weeks ago in the "Fun/Entertainment" section. The original story has now been pulled, because so many people mistook it for reality, but a quick read of the Balatarin version (even with the shaky English offered by Google Translate) makes clear that this was a bit of very black comedy gone very badly wrong.
