Iranian News Agency Apologizes for Reprinting Onion Satire as Fact

Iran’s official news agency FARS may have run an American parody piece as real news, but Kelly Niknejad of the Tehran Bureau says most Iranians aren’t so irony-deprived.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. There’s probably not much overlap between readers of the satirical online magazine The Onion and those of Iran’s state-backed FARS news agency. But it only took a little while for someone to point out this distinctly Oniony headline which appeared on the FARS website recently. “Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama.” Well, it turns out the headline and full article were pulled from The Onion and ran as a FARS news story. Now this is not the first time the irony deprived have taken The Onion at face value, but we thought it made for a great excuse to look at the current state of political satire in Iran with Kelly Niknejad. She’s the editor of Tehran Bureau. It’s an independent source of news on Iran based here in Boston. Kelly, welcome to you.

Kelly Niknejad: Thank you for having me.

Werman: So in The Onion story the ironies keep piling on apparently after being caught out running the original article as their own news story. FARS, this news agency, published an apology which contained still more plagiarism. We know FARS is propaganda, but I mean really, have they no shame?

Niknejad: No, I think they think it’s normal. There’s been many instances of Photoshopping, you know, more missiles in the background or when Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979, they don’t like some of the people in the background because they’re wearing ties or now have been executed, so they just basically for the revolutionary issue will take out people in the background that they don’t like. So they’re known for propaganda and I think most Iranians don’t take FARS seriously, whether they’re in Iran or not. And plus with the Revolutionary Guards, which is not, I don’t think they’ve had much journalism training.

Werman: Probably not too much humor training either.

Niknejad: Iranians do have a great sense of humor actually, even the most humorless ones do have an appreciation for it. I think it’s the only way all of us can deal with the misery and absurdities we have to deal with on a constant basis. But sometimes they’re funny when they are not even trying; I think this would be one of those instances.

Werman: Now we’ve heard of political satire in Iran, but is there anything like The Onion in Iran, you know, kind of pranksters who create news stories?

Niknejad: You know, I think there’s so much of it that goes out instantaneously by text and on Facebook and on Twitter, we don’t know where the original source is, which is good because it keeps people safe. I think in the past someone, a blogger that was based outside of Iran, tried to do one and he got sued for it by some Iranians living in DC. I think that was the end of that. But it’s very prevalent in the culture. I don’t think it even needs to have a separate publication because so much of what is written about Iran is kind of funny if it wasn’t so dire. But

Werman: Like what, give me an example of the best thing you’ve heard, the best joke you’ve heard that ‘s been making the rounds on social media.

Niknejad: Well, you know, I think a recent one would be the Netanyahu speech at the UN when he held up his bomb chart. Some, this Iranian student, Ali Abdi, from Yale, put up something on his Facebook page saying “Begam, Begam” which is a reference to a notorious moment during the presidential election in 2009 when Ahmadinejad was going to drop his own bomb on Mousavi and kind of reveal this something that was going to–about his wife, his academic credentials

Werman: Figurative bomb, of course.

Niknejad: Yes, of course. Mousavi was a, when he was writing he was the, he ran against Ahmadinejad and he was the one that many believes probably won the election. And so it, since 2009 every time–Begam, Begam comes up a lot–so this time it was like when Netanyahu held up his chart, it was like he wrote Begam, Begam, and to everyone within a second they’re like okay, this is the Israeli Ahmadinejad. And it went viral immediately on Facebook. So yeah, I like that one.

Werman: So in Iran today it’s safe to say that most satire takes place in social media, not really in a kind of person to person public sphere?

Niknejad: I mean that’s the safe way to do go about it, especially when you don’t know who originated a certain joke. It’s in everyday like. Iranians are always reading behind the lines, and between the lines, even when you’re trying to give them facts straight up.

Werman: Needless to say there’s a great need for satire when things aren’t going well and I suppose Iranians are really trying to use that as much as possible.

Niknejad: We would not exist without humor. I mean that’s how we get through everything, and there’s a long history of it, even before the revolution.

Werman: Kelly Niknejad, the editor of Tehran Bureau. Thanks very much for coming in.

Niknejad: Thank you.

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