Iran television coverage of the shooting of Donald Trump
As we all know, Iran has been targeted by the United States in an Information war that goes back well over a decade. The country has been vilified, called out for every imaginable human rights abuse, subjected to vicious economic sanctions including exclusion from the global financial payments system (SWIFT). I ask you to bear this in mind when you view this morning’s discussion I had on air with one of the leading news presenters on Press TV, the Iranian global broadcaster, with regard to the shooting of Donald Trump. Is this responsible and professional journalism? Is it worse, …or is it better than what you saw today on CNN, on the BBC or on Euronews? I leave the verdict to you.
Trump has been injured after a gunman opened fire during a campaign rally
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I freely acknowledge that the most relevant point which I raised when I spoke of gross negligence of the authorities responsible for Former President Trump’s security, namely the failure to deploy drones for overhead supervision of the event, came from the remarks of a security expert on CNN that I listened to over breakfast.
As the day has progressed, CNN coverage seemed to move in another direction, towards discussion of the overall political tensions and polarization in the U.S. which made such an attack possible. However, to my knowledge no one in Western mainstream media is going beyond generalities and pinning down the specifics calls for Trump to be ‘stopped’ and even to ‘be shot’ because he is a threat to American democracy, as Biden has said repeatedly and thoughtlessly on the campaign trail. Tonight’s edition of News of the Week hosted by Yevgeny Popov on Russian state television did name the names of several public figures who had directly called for Trump to be killed. It is utterly remarkable that those who made such threats were never brought to justice for inciting violence.
In closing, I was pleased to be given the microphone by Press TV to call attention to one other sign that something is seriously amiss in the security being provided to our most important politicians. The question of whether Trump had previously requested more from the Secret Service was raised by our media during the day and then dismissed. However, no one mentioned the repeated refusal of Biden to name a security team to candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This is utterly outrageous given the murder of his father in the midst of campaigning decades ago.
A country that has thrown away 175 billion dollars to keep the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev in power seems to fret over the few million it would take to keep its own elections safe.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024