Iran Shuts Top Reformist Paper, Citing Cartoon Seen as an Insult

NY Times ^ | 09-12-06 | NAZILA FATHI

[Calvin Coollidge]

TEHRAN, Sept. 11 — Iran’s conservative press watchdog shut down four publications on Monday, including a major reformist newspaper.

The reformist daily, called Shargh, or East, was shut down indefinitely because the newspaper had refused to replace its director and because it published a cartoon in a recent edition that was considered insulting to the government, state-run television said, citing a statement from the press monitoring agency.

“Shargh was banned and referred to the court because of its frequent violations and refusing to make amends in the past month, especially an insulting cartoon in a recent edition,” the statement said.

The statement said that the press agency had issued 70 warnings to the popular newspaper, which has a circulation of 100,000, and had ordered it to replace its managing director, which it had not done.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Weren't they recently displaying freedom of expression by making antiJewish cartoons? Their point was that the West should not have double standards--and it shouldn't. However, this simply goes to show that Iran does have such double standards.

[msnimje]

Maybe somebody in the Iranian Mullahtocracy could come here and lecture us about freedom of speech.

[Malesherbes]

Rudi Bakhtiar of Fox News was sitting there with the editor on camera when he got the call shutting him down. That was a Fox scoop not mentioned by the NYT.

[ncountylee]

Nothing that 50 nanoseconds of man made sunlight couldn't correct.

[WireAndWood]

Wow! They're a lot like Democrats, except marginally sincere!

[edsheppa]

The NYT is so gutless it didn't include the "insulting" cartoon in this article.

[algogo-com]

Good afternoon,Calvin Coollidge.

[Tzimisce]

Interesting...

[kanawa]

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