Last week I started following one of the Twittering Iranians involved in the disputed election results. Only eight days later, I’ve stopped following @persiankiwi. Why? Here’s my original tweet:
Follow @persiankiwi for an inside voice in Iran during this whole
mess - let's hope it's not all true.
9:35 AM Jun 15th from web
I can’t speak for the (now infamous) lack of coverage in America, here in Australia SBS and ABC were at least providing as much information as they could, considering all foreign media were denied renewed press passes which left them in a useless capacity to investigate. Much was made early on about social networks providing better news from inside Tehran, but crucially nobody seemed to be all worried about the quality or accuracy of reports.
For the next week I followed @persiankiwi as did many others, from 5000+ when I started to more than 30000 today. To start off with the reports were just factual updates of what was happening on the ground, but soon descended into spreading what can only be dangerous rumours. Here’s one of best examples from two days ago:
Helicopters pouring acid on people from the sky - #Iranelection
1:37 AM Jun 21st from web
Note there’s no “Reports of” or “People are saying” in the text, it’s stated as a fact. A google search reveals a lot of people repeating the same “fact” without the slightest thought of verifying it first – anybody who questions the legitimacy gets buried under people outraged about it. This is the problem with pseudo-journalism; a lot of people who don’t judge news reports take everything at face value. So far there’s 230,000 pages relating to “acid helicopter iran”, without there being a shred of credible evidence that it happened.
I’ve also stopped following as I’m annoyed at how the Muslim state religion gives license to violence.
Tehran is now alive again with the sound of the people - Allah Akbar - Death to the Dictator - #Iranelectionabout
6 hours ago from web
What part of a democracy calls for the murder of a president? They should surely realise that one man is not a government; the goal (if not re-election) would be to campaign and win the next election under a fair voting process. That’s democracy, what they’re proposing goes by a different name; regicide. I’m sure Parviz Davoodi hopes for democracy being the “dictator” in waiting.
We are the soldiers of Allah - peace be upon him - and we shall fight until justice of God is upon this nation - #Iranelection
10:12 AM Jun 21st from web
They should be fighting for the people’s justice in Iran, not a god, and I think fighting is too literal a word when you’re throwing justice and god in the same sentence. They also don’t seem to realise that “the other side” (the anti-western government currently in power) are as much soldiers of Allah as they are; and just as you, me and just like everybody else in the world. Claiming to be soldiers for a non-existant army takes any legitimacy out of their argument.
Brothers and sisters were killed before our eyes today - the innocent blood of the martyrs of Allah - #Iranelection
10:34 AM Jun 21st from web
It’s an awful time when people are dying in political protests, but calling them martyrs really sets up another domino for what could well turn into a revenge spiral, and soon you’ve got a repeat of the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Let’s all hope not.
