TEHRAN — Iranian officials arrested a Japanese reporter and two Canadian reporters during anti-government protests this week and charged them with “unauthorized reporting,” the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Friday. It did not identify the reporters or their news organizations. The three reporters join two others whose agencies said they were also arrested during Wednesday’s protests marking the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy here. Agence France Presse said its local reporter Farhad Pouladi was detained and the International Federation of Journalists said a Danish journalist, Niels Krogsgaard, was arrested in connection with the demonstration.
“The claim about the arrest of the AFP journalist is under investigation,” the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency cited Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi as saying Friday. Iranian media gave no further details on the other arrested foreigners. All are still believed to be in custody.[...]
Hopefully they are released soon and unharmed.
Meanwhile protesting Iranians are reaching out to Obama….
Nedaagain NO MISUNDERSTANDING WITH LANGUAGE BARRIER
MR #OBAMA HERE PLS LISTEN & DECIDE WHAT SIDE ARE YOU?? Embedded video
See for yourself. This exchange is simultaneously sickening and amazing. The pathetic excuse for a WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (Obama’s Minister of PropOganda) evading questions his typical contemptuous trade mark style, while Reid and Thomas dig in not wanting to let up. You could of cut the friction with a knife.
I never thought I would live to see the day I cheered on Helen Thomas. But that day has arrived.
HELEN THOMAS: We have never had that in the White House. We have had some control [inaudible]. I’m amazed that you people who call for openness and transparency…
ROBERT GIBBS: You haven’t even heard the questions.
CHIP REID: It doesn’t matter. It’s the process. Even if there’s a tough question, it’s a question coming from somebody who was invited and who was screened or the question was screened.
GIBBS: Chip, Chip, lets have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meetings.
THOMAS: No, no, no, we’re having it now.
GIBBS: Well, I’d be happy to have it now.
THOMAS: It’s a pattern.
GIBBS: Which questions do you object to at the town hall meeting?
THOMAS: It’s a pattern.
GIBBS: What’s a pattern?
THOMAS: It’s a pattern of controlling the press.
GIBBS: How so? Is there any evidence going on that I’m currently controlling the press? Poorly, I might add.
THOMAS: Your formal engagements are prepackaged.
GIBBS: How so?
REID: Well, and controlling the public.
THOMAS: How so? By calling reporters the night before to tell them they’re going to be called on. That is shocking.
GIBBS: We’ve had this discussion ad nauseum, and uh…
THOMAS: Of course you would, because you don’t have any answers.
GIBBS: Uh, well, because I didn’t know you were going to ask a question, Helen.
THOMAS: Well you should have.
GIBBS: Have you emailed your question today?
THOMAS: I don’t have to email. I can tell you right now what I want to say.
GIBBS: I don’t doubt that at all, Helen.
REID: Actually, could you pass along a question from all of us to the president: Is he going to support a tax increase on the middle class?
When Gibbs is speaking to the press he is speaking to the American people. When he replies in such a patronizing condescending tone, that is how he is speaking to all of us.
Helen Thomas had more to say after the fact. And she does not hold back.
[...] “What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.
“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.
“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well–for the town halls, for theor the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.” [...]
Update:
Well…well…well…what do we have here? Reid and Thomas have been vindicated. Robert Gibbs has some ’splaining to do.
America’s Right
[...] the White House micromanaging everything just the way Helen Thomas and Chip Reid knew they would do. Consider the similarity of the March 27 report with this one, published today by the Washington Post:
In the highly stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House and the college, and from Internet questions chosen by the administration’s own new-media team.
Of the seven questions the president answered, four were selected by his own staff from people who submitted videos on the White House Web site or who responded to a request for “tweets” from the administration.
The president called randomly on three audience members. Each turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the SEIU union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence. Read it all!>>>
Coincidence??? My sweet potato! No, don’t even go there. That is NOT good enough. I am so sick of being treated like a fool by the Obama Mis-Administration.
Wake up America your intelligence is being insulted on a constant basis. You should be livid.
Conservative girl next door. I am a pissed off red head.
Fear my wrath, or come along for the ride. Choose your side.
Free will, truth and the freedom of speech are my weapons of choice.
"...But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy."
- Flemming Rose
"lan astaslem"
I will not submit.
I will not surrender.
A Refresher Course...For Those In Denial
"Above all, the devil cannot stand to be mocked" - C.S.Lewis
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