RUTHFULLY YOURS

Remember all that media outrage over President Trump’s criticism of its fake news operation?

That’s the same media that is constantly doing unpaid ads for Iran’s nuclear program and its plot to take over Yemen (every story attacking US participation in the “Saudi coalition” and fake news claims about “atrocities” committed against the Shiite Jihadis of the Houthis).

The media claims that Trump’s criticism endangers it. Meanwhile it seems far less interested in Iran’s abuses of journalists.

Iranian courts in July and August sentenced at least six journalists affiliated with Majzooban-e-Noor, a news website that focuses on the Gonabadi Dervish religious order, and a journalist from the state-run outlet Ensaf, to prison terms of between seven and 26 years, and ordered them to be flogged publicly and forced into exile and banned from political and social media activities on their eventual releases, according to news reports and rights organizations.

“These horrifying sentences lay bare Iranian authorities’ depraved attitude toward journalists, as well as the hollow center of President Hassan Rouhani’s promises of reform,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour from Washington, D.C. “Iran should end its vicious campaign against journalists, and allow them to report freely.”

Imagine if the media covered this the way it fulminates over Trump’s criticisms of CNN. But of course it doesn’t. Its claims that it cares about journalism (and its even more bizarre claims that Trump’s criticisms endanger journalists abroad) have always been as fake as its news.