Gozaar sat down to interview Iranian analyst Dr. Ali Reza Nourizadeh about the Green Movement. Dr. Nourizadeh is a senior researcher and director at the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies. He is also a correspondent for Deutsche Welle (German Radio), a political commentator for the radio channel Voice of America, and a senior writer for the Saudi Arabian Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.
It seems that journalists, both in Iran and abroad, have played a vital role in the social campaign currently known as the Green Movement in Iran. How influential have they been, in your opinion?
In the course of the elections, due to the lack of a free press that could tell the other side of the story, blogs played a key role in disseminating information. And perhaps for the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, the overseas media also played a major role: in addition to the two dominant overseas broadcasters of television programming into Iran—that is, Voice of America and BBC—other broadcasters were able to play a role to a certain extent. But at the same time, blogs and online newspapers written by Iranians inside the country gained much importance.
