In October 2022, Press TV, the state-owned and funded news network of the Islamic Republic of Iran, broadcast an entire show targeting the Israeli media watchdog HonestReporting for highlighting antisemitic social media posts of journalists who praised terrorist attacks and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
In a vile attempt at intimidation, the program aired photos of HonestReporting staff members with their children.
The picture they chose for me, taken from my Facebook page, showed me holding my youngest daughter as she inserted my vote into a ballot box at a Jerusalem polling station on Election Day.
When people asked if I was scared, I responded honestly that I was actually more impressed because in choosing that photo, the Iranians really captured my essence. I am very proud of my children and Israeli democracy, and I’ve extolled their virtues all around the world.
I strongly believe that Israel’s democracy is one of the country’s top selling points that should be emphasized when trying to persuade ordinary Americans to support the Jewish state. There is plenty that goes on here that they can’t really relate to, but they understand the importance of a democratic country.
In all of the recent polls that asked Americans which countries they like most and least, the top 10 most-liked countries were all democracies (except in one poll, where Egypt was the 10th). None of the 10 least-liked countries was democratic.
There are, of course, elements in our democracy that don’t exactly make a positive impression. The fact that my daughter voted with me five times before she turned six indicates that our democracy is far from perfect. And not every Israeli politician makes as positive an impression abroad as actress Gal Gadot or basketball player Deni Avdija.
The case for democracy in explaining Israel
But I try to make the case for democracy when explaining Israel. And I believe that the upcoming Israeli election, regardless of its outcome, will make Israel look somewhat better around the world if it’s portrayed fairly and professionally by the international media.
The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror is a best-selling book by Natan Sharansky and Ron Dermer, endorsed by then-President George W. Bush when it was published in 2004. The book advocates for a moral Western foreign policy based on the belief in the universality of freedom and human rights.
Sharansky was very critical of what he called the West’s betrayal of democratic dissidents in Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution. He famously called then-president Barack Obama’s failure to help Iranian protesters the biggest failure to help human rights in modern history.
Are those mistakes being repeated now during the recent Iranian demonstrations against their leadership? The current US president’s words supporting the protesters are obviously very different from those of his predecessors, and his actions as of this writing remain to be seen.
But the international media could certainly do more to make the world aware of the protests and the legitimacy of their outrage against the tyrannical dictatorship the Iranians have endured for far too long.
Herb Keinon was the first to criticize The New York Times and other international media outlets two weeks ago for giving the protests short shrift. HonestReporting’s Rachel O’Donaghue took that criticism further, calling out the Western media for either burying the story or, worse, reframing it by using the regime’s own talking points.
She wrote that when the protests were mentioned at all, their explicitly anti-regime nature was often omitted. Demonstrations were reframed as vague cost-of-living protests, despite protesters chanting openly for the end of clerical rule. When journalists were challenged about their lack of coverage, they offered absurd excuses.
The BBC’s world affairs editor, John Simpson, claimed that social media footage must be carefully verified before reputable outlets could use it – a striking assertion, given the same outlet’s willingness to publish unverified material and casualty figures from Hamas-run Gaza for more than two years, without meaningful verification, attribution, or editorial caution.
Britain’s Channel 4 international editor, Lindsey Hilsum, echoed that line, arguing that Iran is objectively difficult to cover because foreign journalists cannot enter the country.
That begs the question: Why aren’t they in the country?
An October 2025 opinion piece published in Iran International cited a telling remark by Channel 4’s respected veteran anchor, Jon Snow, about his reporting from Tehran. When asked how his network managed to secure access to Iranian officials, he said simply, “They whistle, and we go.”
That seemingly innocuous line revealed that correspondents not only end up parroting the messages of the regimes they cover but also the bigger problem of the structure of modern foreign reporting that rewards access above all else.
If you have a visa and a fixer who is approved by the intelligence services, the state can decide where you go and whom you interview. If you challenge the narrative you are shown, you risk losing that access. The price of defiance is expulsion. Most choose to stay, so they comply and end up filing reports advancing the Iranian regime’s narrative.
Too many media outlets have been laundering Tehran’s propaganda.
The BBC and NBC News ran headlines amplifying Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s claim that protesters were vandals trying to please US President Donald Trump. Sky News led with Iranian state media allegations blaming Israel and the United States for the violence.
CNN, even while acknowledging deaths, repeatedly emphasized its inability to independently verify activist reports – a caveat that might carry weight if the network had not spent the past two years publishing Hamas-run casualty figures from Gaza with minimal skepticism or attribution.
Iranian dissidents and activists have openly called out Western media outlets on social media, expressing disgust at how they amplify regime narratives while sidelining the voices of those risking their lives for freedom.
The world is stuck getting its information from freelancers who know they have to report what the regime wants the world to hear if they want to stay alive, from Iran’s Press TV, or from Al Jazeera, which is broadcasting what the Qatari regime wants the world to know.
Sound familiar?
“In Gaza, reporters have repeatedly minimized Hamas’s crimes, sanitized Islamist ideology, and reframed a genocidal terror organization as a resistance movement,” O’Donaghue wrote. “Iran has now completed that reckoning. Here, the media is not merely soft-pedaling a regime’s actions. It is actively casting doubt on victims, amplifying tyrants, and treating the overthrow of an Islamist dictatorship as a story to be managed – not reported.
“Across Gaza, Tehran, Beirut, and beyond, Western media outlets have repeatedly found themselves on the same side as the world’s most brutal Islamist regimes, whether consciously or through moral inertia.
“If the Iranian regime falls, the world will rightly remember the bravery of those who risked their lives for change. It should also remember the cowardice of much of the Western media. Iranian courage must stand as the media’s shame.”
The Iranian people deserve to raise their children in freedom and even democracy. It won’t happen if their demonstrations are ignored.
The writer was the chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years until becoming the executive director of HonestReporting.