Global Media News is a weekly webcast covering media news from around the world. GMN is a production of Media Studies students from the SUNY College @ Old Westbury. We scour the web for news about the world's media.
Listen to our next webcast from the New Media Newsroom streaming live on Thursday, April 16 @ 11am EST.
Can't listen live? Our next webcast of the season will be posted by 2:00pm, Thursday, April 16, 2015.
Global Media News is a weekly webcast covering media news from around the world. GMN is a production of Media Studies students from the SUNY College @ Old Westbury.
This week on Global Media News: "Media News from Iran & Turkey"
Iranian Election Coverage: Journalists under siege?
Internet Access in Iran
XFactor Iran: Women, Hijaabs, Television
Iranian Government's Reaction to Argo
Social Media Censorship in Iran
Turkish Journalists Banned from German Courtroom?
Next week on GMN: Media News from Iraq and the Middle East.
Listen to our webcast streaming live next week on Thursday, April 18 @ 11am EST.
Can't listen live? Our next webcast of the season will be posted by 2:00pm, Thursday, April 18, 2013.
The growing "it" thing to do in Iran is to undergo rhinoplasty surgery, or simply called a nose job. And according to guardian.co.uk, Iran now has the highest rate in the world. This is surprising for a country that has women covering their bodies and not showing skin. Many women undergo the surgery becuase they find it being the only thing they can do to show or heighten their beauty underneath their hijab.
One woman in the guardian.co.uk stated:
"It's
human nature to want to seek out attention with a beautiful figure,
hair, skin … but hijab doesn't let you do that. So we have to satisfy
that instinct by displaying our 'art' on our faces."
Others see it simply as taking advantage of the benefits of modernity.
"Science and technology have progressed, and people can look more beautiful," said one. "Why shouldn't we?"
The guardian also states that the women are getting nose jobs beacause they want to look like actors they see in Hollywood films and
satellite television programmes from the west.
Women aren't the only ones taking advantage of this growing fade men in Iran are also going under the knife. According to the Iran-Daily newspaper. Men make up a third of surgeries in the country. the reports show that 20% of the surgeries being perform are unnessary.
Iran's cyber police
have imposed more restrictions on internet cafes. They have issued a list of 20
new requirements that must be complied with within 15 days by all such
businesses or else they will face prosecution. This news comes from NCR-Iran.
Cyber
police have said that all businesses that offer internet services must be owned
by "committed, married individuals that have no criminal or judicial
records."
The
cafes must now also keep details of their customers' identities, including their
address, national number and telephone number.
The
businesses also have to keep detailed records of when and how their customers
used the internet, including a list of the websites they visited. The
information must be kept for a minimum of six months.
Also
the use of VPNs, technology that allows users to go around internet blocking,
is also forbidden in internet cafes.
Setting
up 24-hour surveillance cameras and keeping those recordings for up to six
months is another requirement for internet cafes.
This is yet another example of the lack of internet freedom in
iran.
Iran has been growing increasingly more and more angry towards the U.S and how they portray Iran in media and film. United Kingdom's Daily Mail is reporting that Iran plans to sue Hollywood over the unrealistic portrayal of its nation in the award winning movie Argo, featuring Ben Affleck. Argo is a movie produced in 2012 which takes CIA operative Tony Mendez, (played by Ben Affleck) and his men to Iran to rescue 6 U.S diplomats during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.
Iran's is calling the scene in the movie where five hostages escape from Iran "CIA Propaganda." This is not the first time Iran has had a problem with a Hollywood movie. They are claiming many of the historical facts in the movie 300 are also distorted. Last month Iran officials claimed Argo to be a "pro CIA movie" with means of destroying Irans image to the world. Iran's television networks called it an advertisement for the CIA.
According to The Sun Argo is banned in Iranian movie theaters. Even with it being banned citizens of Iran are still getting there hands on copies of the movie from bootleggers.
Mehndi Tondro, a specialist in anti Islamic and Iranian film said that
"We Iranians look stupid, backward and simple-minded in this movie."
"Hollywood is not a normal industry - it’s a conspiracy by capitalism and Zionism. We need to come up with an answer to this and other films."
As X Factor is taking over the world by storm and even visiting the United States last year for the first time. Many are enjoying the singers and the stars that become of it. But in one country in particular the show is banned and not even aired by the government on its networks.
According to Guardian.Co.Uk the Iranian version of XFactor, Googoosh Music Academy, which is is aired by Manoto TV transmitted from London. Manoto TV is a Persian -language entertainment channel that is based in London. Manoto TV is only available in Iran by using illegal satellite dishes that are installed on rooftops.
In the Dailymail.co.uk nearly 700,000 likes have hit the shows facebook page. Forums has been setup talking about the show. What has people in uproar discussion and arguments is the latest winner of Googoosh Music Academy, Ermia, a 31-year-old mother and wife from Iran. The talks are not the fact that she is a woman, but because she is a mother, wife, and most importantly is the fact she wore a hijab during her duration on the show. Many are now saying that the show is fraud and might have been rigged because she won.
In Iran there are religious restrictions and one in particular does not not allow a married woman to sing in public. But with Ermia recieving blessings from her husband to join the show she did it and won. The secular and ultra conservatives are both throwing stones at the show and at Ermia. One group stating she didnt cover enough, while another is saying are we going backwards to a time where women covered up everything in everywhere.
Ermia just wanted to sing and now she might have started something even deeper in Iran.
Two pro-reform journalists have been
arrested in Iran. This news comes from the guardian. Managing
editor Mohammad Mahdi Emami Nasseri and political editor Ali Reza Aghaeirad were
reported detained on March 6.
ISNA, the Iranian Students' News Agency, said the
journalists were detained by agents from the Tehran prosecutor's office.
Their arrests were linked to last month's publication of an article that criticized
the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iran began a wave of arrests on January 27. On
this day authorities detained at least 14 journalists affiliated with reformist news
outlets. In all, 23 journalists, including Nasseri, Aghaeirad, Kurdpour, and
Ahmadi, have been arrested since then. At least five are still being held
behind bars, along with dozens of other journalists who have been held for
months or years.
Iran has maintained a
revolving-door policy for imprisoning journalists, freeing some detainees on
furloughs even as new arrests are made.
The moves targeting media come amid
preparations for Iran’s June presidential election.
This is just another example of the lack of media freedom and politics in the middle east and Iran.
Being that I am an extreme lover of the arts, I am infatuated with
the various creative visions and messages that are given off from different
works of art. Aside from traditional forms of art such as paintings and
sculptures, the digital revolution has contributed to the creation of films and
other forms of art that are able to reach broader audiences.
In a TED Talk entitled “Shirin Neshat: Art in Exile”, a Persian artist named Shirin Neshat spoke about
how she has lived in the United States, in a self-imposed exile from her native
country, Iran. In the video Neshat spoke about how things were when she lived
in Iran, and how things changed for the worse once she went back to Iran as an
adult. According to Neshat, her people have been fighting a battle against
their regime and “government that has done every crime to remain in power”.
Many artists like Neshat are at risk because they pose as a threat to
the structure of their government. The intentions of artists like Neshat are to
“inspire, provoke, mobilize, report and bring hope to their people”. After
visiting Iran as an adult and viewing a country that she could no longer
recognize, she became immersed in the study of the Islamic Revolution, and how
it dramatically transformed the lives of Iranian women. According to the video,
Neshat found the way that Iranian women embodied the political transformation
of their government to be very interesting. She thus thought by studying a
woman she could read and analyze the structure and ideologies of Iranian
culture.
During her time studying Iranian women, Neshat produced a collection that
addressed and focused on these issues, and the concept of “those who willingly
stand in the intersection of their love of God and faith, but violence, crime,
and cruelty”. In 2009, Neshat produced a film entitled Women Without Men, which
explored and compared the rights of Iranian women in 1953 and today. This film
was based off of a novel written by an Iranian woman named Shahrnush Parsipur,
who was sent to jail for 5 years for writing this book.
Although Neshat does not have direct access to her country, she finds
herself to be the voice of her people. The works of artist’s like Shirin Neshat
should be heavily applauded, and need to be exposed so that they could continue
to provoke the minds of their audiences. Without the expansion of the digital
revolution, the issues that these artists try to address would have never
been able to reach the amount of individuals that it has.
Below is the TED Talk that I watched entitled, Shirin Neshat: Art in exile:
Below is the trailer for the movie Women Without Men:
Iran is really cracking down on the content of their citizens' social media networks pages. Recently, the Iranian authorities have arrested four people over Favebook contests such as "Am I hot or Not." This is a so called "beauty contest" where you post a picture and people rate your appearance. Iranian authorities have arrested those associated with this piece of the Facebook network. Iran’s state Cyber Police on Monday said that it had arrested two men and two women, for “promoting vulgarity and corruption.” For more serious crimes such as Iranians being in pornographies, they will face the death sentence. This statement came from the police on Tuesday,
"In the name of God, we inform you that the page “Daaf and Paaf” is now under police control. The four main managers of this group have been identified and arrested on the charge of inciting and encouraging individuals to access vulgar content through the Internet."
Police said that the four individuals who were arrested confessed to their crimes. These two men and women were all taken in and facing charges (unknown) for maintaining Facebook profile pages that, according to authorities acted as a "Hot or Not.com" page. Whether or not these pages were in fact maintained as such profiles is also unknown. The only word the public has to go by is the Iranian police. Even though confessions were made by all four offenders, we do not know what the content of their profiles really was.
If this happened in America, it wouldn't even be a crime. This goes to show how differently the media works in different countries. In countries such as Iran, we see that the media likes to keep things more secretive and that publicly, far less customs are accepted. In Iran, most of social media seems to be unacceptable. While in other countries, more aspects of the media are acceptable to the public eye. Iran and other countries will just remain "strict" on the media.
