An Iranian Journalist Waits for Obama
Photo by: Ehsan Nourozi
Laura Secor: The New Yorker
Iranian reporters may not cross certain red lines. They cannot insult the Supreme Leader, question the official version of Islam, or express doubts about the country’s nuclear program. And, according to Masih Alinejad, a thirty-three-year-old reporter for Iran Labor News Agency and a columnist for the reformist newspaper Etemad-e Melli, since the 1979 revolution Iranian journalists have been banned from interviewing American officials. This rule is not hard to enforce, as there is no official American presence in Iran—no Embassy, no visiting dignitaries—and therefore no one to avoid. But after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad courted the American media during his visit to New York in the fall of 2008, Alinejad started to wonder why she couldn’t interview the President of the United States.
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