Iran Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
August 7, 2010
About the MSI
IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country’s media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and produced the first Middle East and North Africa MSI in 2005.
MSI Overview | Africa | Asia | Europe & Eurasia | Middle East & North Africa
Download the Complete Iran MSI Chapter (PDF): 2009 | 2008 | 2006/7 | 2005
MSI Iran - 2009 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 0.81
Widely considered the darkest year for the Iranian press, 2009 saw freedom of speech suffering unprecedented repression at the hands of the government. In 2009, following the presidential elections that kept President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in office, the government sent security forces to violently subdue street protests; revoked licenses or banned at least 11 reformist newspapers and numerous weekly and monthly publications; and launched a massive roundup and arrest of thousands of protesters, activists, bloggers, journalists, and intellectuals. At least 90 journalists, press photographers, website writers, and bloggers were pursued and arrested. Authorities released some quickly, while other detainees remain in prison, serving long sentences. Later, several journalists would step forward to tell about the unimaginable torture they had suffered in solitary confinement. Iran became the second-worst jailer of journalists in the world in 2009,1 following China.
The Supreme National Security Council, headed by Ahmadinejad, issued secret censorship instructions to newspapers, ordering them to suppress reports of popular protests after the election, and to remove news about dissident candidates. The council also took steps to shut down non-governmental media outlets and the Association of Iranian Journalists (AoIJ). In addition to banning AOIJ activities, the authorities arrested the secretary and the vice secretary of the association, and most of the members of the Press Freedom Defense Association—practically ending independent guild activities of journalism in Iran.
The year 2009 was indeed one of the gravest for Iranian journalism, but it only paved the way for worse conditions in 2010, with unfair and illegal trials and judicial proceedings, more illegal arrests, prison abuse, and sustained pressure on the press.
Despite increasing arrests and trials of Internet users, bloggers, and website contributors, citizen journalism grew in unprecedented ways in 2009. A new awareness emerged of the potential and strength of citizen journalism, with the broad use of blog websites, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to share Iran's story with the world. The largest television networks of the world published video, photographs, and reports of anonymous Iranian citizen journalists during the post-election protests, in part due to limitations or bans on foreign journalists traveling to Iran. For the first time in three decades, the image of a vibrant, young, and peaceful nation emerged through thousands of smuggled photographs and video clips posted on YouTube, showing peaceful marches of millions of people—and later, the graphic deaths of some of the same protesters on the streets of Tehran, shot by Iran's security forces.
Due to the repressive environment in Iran, IREX did not conduct a panel discussion in Iran. This chapter represents research conducted on the situation and discussions with various professionals knowledgeable about the situation in Iran. The names of those contacted will not be published to protect their personal security. This chapter therefore provides a summary of the state of the media in Iran.
1 CPS's 2009 Prison Census: Freelance Journalists Under Fire. Committee to Protect Journalists; December 1, 2009; http://www.cpj.org/reports/2009/12/freelance-journalists-in-prison-cpj-2009-census.php
