Iranian Media Explore Chance to Break Taboos in Rouhani Opening
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Ali Aalaei, an editor at Iran’s Etemaad daily, recalls how he tried to publish a story about a dissident arrested in 2009 only to have it pulled from the paper by editors who didn’t want to alienate the censors. Last month, “we put him on our cover.”
The article featured several photographs of the anguished face of Mohsen Safaei Farahani, a reformist politician and head of Iran’s Football Federation, at his trial in 2010. Farahani was sentenced to six years in prison for challenging the results of the previous year’s presidential election, won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad amid charges of fraud and nationwide protests that led to a government crackdown. “We got a good reaction” to the piece, Aalaei said. “Press restrictions have lessened.”