Orientalist Representations and the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election: The New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN.com

Abstract

The 2009 presidential election in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which resulted in a landslide victory for the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was extensively covered by the Western media. Three leading American news providers presented the two main presidential candidates very differently. One was portrayed as enlightened and moderate, while the other was depicted as crude and irrational. While in the United States it is widely believed that the media is relatively credible in the way it presents the news, critics often believe that the U.S. media is Orientalist in the way it approaches non-Western countries and especially Muslim countries. According to critics, countries that are politically at odds with the United States, such as Iran, are presented in an almost completely negative light. In this article, election coverage from the New York Times, The Washington Post, as well as the CNN website is analyzed to determine the approach these news agencies took to the presidential election as well as the degree to which they stuck to the facts on the ground. The paper concludes that all three media outlets were highly biased in their coverage and that they regularly dismissed or ignored facts while repeatedly making claims that were unsubstantiated.