'I brought two American flags with me to Iran. Someone just offered me $500 for one of them!'

Texts from Tehran and how Olympic Gold hints the Revolution has come full circle.

“US wins gold. Great omen.” While they await news of either American bombs or a nuclear deal that would allow the regime that massacred its own people in the streets last month to survive, people inside Iran are escaping their anxiety with the Winter Olympics, one with an American flag so popular others are comping at the bit to buy it - even in an era of wild currency inflation. The US men’s hockey team emerging victorious has brought comfort - and a curious development at the intersection of sports and geopolitics. The last time American men won Gold in the ice hockey rink was 1980 Winter Olympics - when American hostages were being held after the US embassy was stormed in Tehran, by a newly minted Islamic Republic who’d just overthrown the Shah. Exactly 46 years later the American men’s hockey team has won Gold again, and in the streets of Tehran are chants calling for the return of the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi.

After a break in the protests following a deadly crackdown by the Islamic Republic’s regime forces last month, students have taken to the streets again in Tehran.

Western media have left the country now, so they won’t see these protests firsthand. And their visits have raised questions at best and ire at worst. I myself have been reflecting on how we covered the Islamic Republic during the Obama nuclear deal era, when the Iranian regime was run by a group who signaled to the world they were reformist. I was the person who thawed relations between the Islamic Republic and the BBC. In 2013 in Geneva, I secured the first interview with an Iranian official - Foreign Minister Javad Zarif - since the BBC had been kicked out in 2009 during the Green Revolution. How it happened, and subsequent stories of dealings with the Iranian regime are probably for another time; let’s just say years later in 2018, after Trump had pulled out of the JCPOA, an Iranian diplomat in London in told me ‘the nuclear deal legitimized us.’ So did our coverage.

Now no longer bound by what I believe to be rules that need re-examining and writing our own H2H rulebook, I’m looking at how we cover a country that’s repeatedly had the chance to tell the truth and do the right thing and chosen not to, differently.

For their safety, we have to keep our eyes on the ground in Iran anonymous. They have sent us a rather raw reaction - which I’ve kept unedited - to Western media accepting the invitation to visit Tehran for the 47th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution - the regime’s way of indicating to the world everything is ok and their status is secure.

“I rarely criticize reporters; independent or the giants like the BBC, CNN and Fox. I’d often criticize President Trump and his followers for blasting journalists and labeling whatever news they did not like as “fake news.”

Then I moved to Iran, and everywhere I’d turn, folks would berate the BBC - an organization I deeply admired at the time. People would say “The BBC is a tool of the Islamic Republic,” or “The BBC brought the mullahs.”

I correlated what Iranians said about the media to what Trumpers would say and I had concluded that the uneducated minority didn’t understand. However, I reluctantly admit that it was me who didn’t understand. I’m not going in on the conspiracy theories. I’m agreeing the media giants have their own agenda.

Out of the eight billion people on earth, almost one hundred million on Persian. Of those, roughly 10 million live outside of Iran. And the reason they did that was not because they want to live in Los Angeles, Washington DC, London or Paris. They left to have a better life. This includes my parents that took me from Tehran to Los Angeles in the 1980’s. Generally speaking revolution and war do not do well in raising a child.

Christiane Amanpour’s phrase “breakneck speed” captures the emotional physics of a story when events begin to outrun comprehension. Forty thousand dead in forty-eight hours, a number so staggering it should reset every priority, yet somehow it becomes one more data point absorbed by the crawl. Then Fred (Pleitgen, from CNN) arrives in Tehran and it becomes clear that presence is not the same as reporting: he misses the craft of journalism, the fundamentals of being a reporter, the discipline of noticing, checking, and telling the truth plainly. And still, Lyse (Doucet, from BBC) calls it a “family festival” a phrase that can sound like warmth, or like permission, depending on what you’ve just watched happen.”

I’ve read and re-read this despatch and wondered about our role as journalists - who are we meant to serve? Do the fundamentals of journalism like objectivity end up at odds with humanity? “Be truthful not neutral,” says Christiane Amanpour - who has been criticized and even ambushed by anti regime activists angry for her questions of Crown Prince Reza Pahalvi at Munich Security Conference they deemed ‘pro regime.’ A former colleague on LinkedIn criticized my questioning of ‘impartiality’ saying it’s incorrect to equate it with neutrality. But isn’t broadcasting in the very streets where a regime massacred its own people, in the name of impartiality, effectively remaining neutral on human rights abuse?

For what it’s worth - I believe it’s important to physically feel the energy in a country so I understand accepting the invitation; propaganda can’t spin intuition. My husband Jamie Angus, who was in charge of such deployments and went on one himself, wrote for us that he disagrees. I went to Cuba - Cuban Americans were angry at me. I went to Azerbaijan - Armenians were angry at me, etc. That being said I wouldn’t air the blatant propaganda segment they plan on every visit for every reporter: the US embassy that was stormed during the Islamic Revolution, where the average person isn’t allowed to visit; it’s not like a public museum - and it would be, if the Islamic Republic were truly confident in the secure image they so desperately paint the Western world to see.