A State of Siege and the Lazy Balance That Helps It
Iran under an internet blackout is a state of siege. In that condition, “both sides” is not journalism. It can become dissemination of malice. Complacency. Professional malpractice.
The shortcut is familiar: introduce a political surrogate as a neutral-sounding Professor, skip the affiliations, soften the frame, and hide behind the ritual of “balance.” The result is credential laundering. The audience pays for it with confusion. Peaceful protesters pay for it with their lives and freedom.
A blackout is not just darkness. It’s choreography.
It’s the state deciding which voices survive the night.
It’s the state deciding which images leak through.
It’s the state deciding whether you can call your mother.
It’s the state deciding what the narrative is while blood is being washed off the streets.
And then, on the other side of the world, there is a studio. Clean sound. Good lighting. A well-known host trained to hold eye contact with a camera. The segment begins as if we are still living in normal time, as if the only thing at stake is debate, not lives.
This is the first lie: in a blackout, normal rules do not apply.
When Iran cuts the internet, verification becomes scarce and dangerous. Witnesses are isolated. Families are pressured. Footage becomes contraband. The regime is not merely repressing people; it is editing reality, distorting it beyond recognition into lies.
That is why platforming Islamic Regime apologists during an information siege is not a minor editorial choice. It is an ethical fault line, and the West has tripped over it for decades, then called the bruises “pragmatism,” “freedom of speech,” “examining all sides of a story.”
“Selective internet access” is not a footnote. It’s the story.
In a CNN transcript, the host introduces the guest as a “fierce defender,” notes he “was once an adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team,” and then says he joins “by selective internet access at Iran’s Press TV station in Tehran.”
Read that again, slowly.
Selective internet access.
Press TV.
Tehran.
That is not “a guest from Iran.” That is a guest arriving through a pipe the regime controls.
So the question is not merely what they say.
The question is why they can speak at all, while others cannot, while anyone else who can tell the truth may not survive one minute after the interview.
In a state of siege, access is a weapon.
If you put a regime defender on air under those conditions, you don’t get to pretend the segment is neutral by default. You are letting the weapon be wielded on your platform, against the truth. You must work for neutrality. You must earn it the hard way, with disclosure, with verification, with a frame that matches the violence of the context. Neutrality is not a lazy way out, but a responsibility to be taken seriously.
Otherwise, you are not reporting on a blackout. You are broadcasting from inside the darkness of tyranny imposed on a country to cover innocent blood spilled for freedom.
Interviewing apologists is not the scandal. Interviewing them like normal guests is.
Let’s be precise. The problem is not that a broadcaster interviews someone who defends the regime or has a differing view. The problem begins with the introduction.
If a guest is a repeat defender, say it plainly.
If he/she appears from Press TV, say it plainly.
If the regime controls the pipe, say it plainly, more than once.
If you insist on “balance,” don’t pair him/her with a lightweight. Put them opposite someone who can challenge claims in real time, especially when you aren’t. It is not laziness, it is outright journalistic malpractice to help the apologists with weak opponents.
Ultimately, I dare say, what about your own common sense when you hear such outrage?
Then do what journalism used to do when it still feared being fooled: insist on verifiable facts and verify the facts.
Numbers. Names. Chains of custody. Independent monitors. The mechanics of censorship. The legal basis for arrests. Who issued the orders. Which agency is firing. What happens to detainees.
And if you cannot verify because the blackout makes verification dangerous or impossible, you do not “balance” with obviously biased denial. You say: we cannot verify this claim due to an imposed blackout. You do not let denial sit on the desk like an equal fact.
When civilians are being killed, “neutrality” becomes a convenient copout, especially when the voice you platform belongs to the machinery that benefits from the darkness.
That isn’t lecturing. It’s a plea for decency when innocent lives are being lost.
Piers Morgan’s theatre, and the same structural failure
Spectacle. Confrontation. Virality.
A sensationalist platform can still do real journalism, but only if it chooses clarity over heat. When the segment becomes a gladiator pit, the apologist doesn’t need to win facts. He only needs to survive the clip. He only needs to create fog, bewilder and confuse. The internet will do the rest once the “Joe Rogan-isation” formula kicks in.
Outrage-driven formats often produce heat without producing clarity. They generate engagement while leaving the audience unsure what is true. Go ahead, but remember the consequences on innocent lives halfway across the world.
Propaganda loves that outcome. Fog is a cousin of censorship.
Working Theory: availability is mistaken for legitimacy
I’m not interested in scolding veteran journalists from the cheap seats. I understand deadlines. I understand live segments. I understand the seduction of a guest who answers the phone. I also understand the race to the like/click/share/subscribe holy grail and everything that goes with it.
The lazy working Theory: during a crackdown, producers book the same English-speaking regime defenders because they are reliably available, for a reason. And availability gets mistaken for legitimacy.
The siege creates a market distortion: the people who can speak are not the people with the clearest conscience. They are the people with the most permission, an agenda, covering up crimes with well packaged, appeal to liberal soft spots.
That is exactly why titles become dangerous. A clean title helps permission masquerade as authority.
A simple standard that doesn’t insult anyone and doesn’t betray anyone either
If you want a rule that doesn’t sound like moral grandstanding, try this:
During a blackout, disclosure must get louder, not quieter.
Say who the guest is, and what else he/she has been, up front.
Say how they are connected, and why they have access when others don’t.
Don’t let denial do the work of evidence. Especially when there are lives at stake.
And if you can’t do this in real time, don’t book the segment as “analysis.” Book it as what it is: a regime narrative under controlled conditions.
This isn’t an attack on journalism. It’s an attempt to rescue it from lazy balance, the kind that feels polite in a studio while people bleed off-camera.
The betrayal is quiet
The Islamic Regime doesn’t need Western journalists to praise it. It needs them to normalize it. And so far, many of them from the NYT to CNN to podcast stars, have done a pretty good job at it.
To keep the regime inside the frame of “disputed claims.”
To keep its violence inside the frame of “both sides.”
To keep its apologists inside the frame of “Professor.” Not just from Tehran University, but Columbia, Concordia, or McGill. That is the extent of the rot that has been ignored for decades.
That is how a state of siege becomes just another segment.
And that is how a profession loses its nerve without noticing.
Imagine if this was how Bernstein and Woodward were operating then!
For all I care, the profession can even lose its soul. But in moments like this, when an entire nation is convulsing under the claws of a brutal regime, there is no excuse for turning your platform into a shelter for its defenders. Even if you are fool enough to let them use you and your platform.
If you cannot name your guest honestly, do not book them.
If you cannot challenge their claims, do not air them.
If you cannot verify because the regime has cut the internet, say so and stop pretending denial is a second “side.”
Because this is what you are doing when you hide an apologist behind the word Professor. You are laundering a state narrative while the state is laundering blood off the streets.
So here is the choice. Either do journalism, meaning disclosure, evidence, and real challenge, or step aside. Stop feeding the blackout. Stop polishing the lies. Stop helping the siege.
Let Iranians speak for themselves. And if they cannot speak, because the regime has cut every line, then your duty is not to provide a microphone to the men who cut the lines. Your duty is to tell your audience why the silence exists, who benefits from it, and what it is covering up.
That is not politics. That is basic decency. Forget about the journalism part.