Maziar Bahari
An interview with the Iranian-Canadian journalist who was imprisoned in Iran.
This week’s episode of The Listening Post is a special edition – we feature an extended cut of our interview with Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari.
Iran has been a big media story ever since the disputed presidential elections last year.
Bahari was on assignment with Newsweek magazine covering the elections in June 2009 when he was arrested without charge and imprisoned in Iran’s infamous Evin prison.
Richard Gizbert speaks to Bahari about the 118 days he spent in prison – what he went through, how he got through his time there and his insights about another well-known Iranian media figure currently behind bars in Evin, Hossein Derakhshan.
But 2009 was not the first time that Iran was at the centre of the international media’s attention.
There were revolutions in 1953 and 1979 where the media played a big role. However, there was something unique about last year’s story.
With the prevalence of the Internet and social media in Iran, the authorities could not control the flow of information as they had done in the past.
In the second half of the show, Maziar Bahari speaks about the impact the web is having on Iran, the skewed view of Iran’s state-funded media and the TV satire show that was used as evidence to implicate him in court.
Sticking with the ethos of this week’s show we selected an Iranian-Canadian music video as our web video of the week. The band, Blurred Vision, took a classic 1979 Pink Floyd track, Another Brick in the Wall, substituted a crucial word, and with it made a music video with a strong political message. Watch it here.
This episode of The Listening Post aired from Friday, May 7, 2010.