Some of the most incendiary accusations made against Iran’s government by corporate media, celebrity influencers and Western leaders in the past months are little more than fabrications. And most remain uncorrected.
by Setareh Sadeqi and Christopher Weaver
Part 2 - BBC Persian accuses Iran of killing more than Russia in Ukraine
On, November 18, BBC Persian posted an image Instagram and Facebook showing a crowd of Iranians cheering as a vehicle was set on fire. “The bloody crackdown on protests has left as many deaths as the war in Ukraine,” read the BBC Persian headline.
This was, at best, an act of journalistic malpractice, as the hyperbolic headline was only explained in the third paragraph of the BBC’s article as referring to two entirely different, arbitrarily chosen date ranges for Iran and Ukraine. The BBC continued, “As human rights organizations report, between September 22 and October 17, 224 protesters died in Iran and in Ukraine between September 1 to September 25th, 216 Ukrainian citizens died in Ukraine.” Which “human rights organizations” provided these vaguely worded statistics was not specified, but it was clear the date ranges were cherry picked.
By this same distorted logic, the BBC could have claimed that “more protesters have been killed today in Iran than died in WWI,” with some later clarification concealed by an obscure asterisk-linked footnote explaining that they were referring only to the one day of the Christmas truce in 1914.
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