The Trouble Covering Tehran

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Americans watched the war unfold through footage captured by journalists embedded with troops across the region. Two decades later, when Russia invaded Ukraine, foreign correspondents from U.S.-based networks raced to Kyiv and other areas of conflict, broadcasting live as missiles struck Ukrainian territory. But when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran over the weekend, there were few, if any, Western journalists in the country to document the damage firsthand.

In a nation largely closed to Western media and with broadly limited internet access, the conflict is unfolding as something of an information black box, forcing news organizations to cover one of the most consequential military escalations in years largely from the outside. Adding to the challenge: Whether they can trust pronouncements coming from a Trump administration that has exhibited few compunctions about lying, from the president on down; and the degradation of social media, especially X, which is no longer a reliable source of information in breaking news situations.

Major television news networks and newspapers tasked with covering the war are having to piece together events from government statements, grainy videos circulating online, and reports from Iranian state media. In an era where many news organizations have been forced to scale back foreign bureaus and reporting resources—most notably the recent and devastating cuts at The Washington Post—the conflict is quickly becoming a test for media, exacerbated by the fact that Iran remains one of the most difficult places on earth for journalists to operate safely.

The geographic spread of the reporting team at CNN, the U.S. network with arguably the most foreign reporting resources, illustrates the challenge. The network has reporters fanned out across the region—Erin Burnett, Nick Paton Walsh, and Jeremy Diamond in Tel Aviv, Nic Robertson in Riyadh, Becky Anderson in Abu Dhabi, Paula Hancocks in Dubai, and Clarissa Ward reporting from Erbil in northern Iraq. Elsewhere across cable news, Fox News had Trey Yingst reporting live from Tel Aviv, Nate Foy on the ground in Cyprus, and Lucas Tomlinson in Istanbul. But none appeared to be inside Iran as of Sunday afternoon.

The New York Times is similarly mobilizing its global newsroom to cover the unfolding conflict. A spokesperson for the paper told Status that “hundreds of journalists from across The Times' global newsroom–in New York, Washington, London, Seoul and a large and growing reporting team on the ground in the region–have been coming together to produce comprehensive coverage of every aspect of this military action.”

But few news organizations still possess the global infrastructure to support half a dozen or more reporters monitoring the situation on the ground in neighboring countries. Years of budget cuts have thinned the ranks of foreign correspondents in the region across the industry. At The Post, recent layoffs hit international coverage particularly hard, with the paper’s entire Middle East desk laid off. In January, Post reporter Yeganeh Torbati, who had been covering Iran, publicly appealed to owner Jeff Bezos on social media alongside colleagues, noting that she had spent months covering developments inside the country and wanted to continue the work. The appeals to Bezos to save the foreign reporting staff went unheeded.

“If I were The Washington Post right now, I’d still want international journalists,” Ian Bremmer wrote on social media, where many experts called attention to the terrible timing of The Post’s retrenchment during this moment of crisis abroad. Spokespersons for The Post did not respond to requests for comment, but the paper’s rolling coverage of the conflict dominated its homepage all weekend.

Elsewhere, on Saturday morning, CBS News broke into streaming coverage with a live broadcast produced by The Free Press, Bari Weiss’ anti-woke opinion outlet, featuring a panel of commentators. During one exchange, host Rafaela Siewert asked the conservative British pro-Israel commentator Douglas Murray about criticism from Tucker Carlson, who had called the attack “absolutely disgusting and evil.” Murray dismissed Carlson’s claims as “outrageous,” arguing that the focus should remain on what he described as the Iranian people’s opportunity to “take their country back.”

Exchanges like this throughout the weekend captured the strange reality of news organizations trying to cover this conflict from thousands of miles away—with some relying on punditry, in lieu of reporting. For now, much of the world is watching events in Iran through fragments, as limited clips from civilians inside the region circulate across social media and reporters piece together developments from neighboring countries. Whether that changes in the coming days remains unclear, and Trump officials were notably absent from the Sunday discussion shows to explain, or make a case, for what’s transpiring.

Major news outlets contacted by Status would not address whether they intended to send journalists into Iran, citing obvious safety concerns. And for the moment, what appears to be the defining conflict of Trump’s presidency thus far is unfolding largely outside the sight of Western journalists.

[Data via Box Office Mojo]

The latest episode of Power Lines is out.

In this week’s episode: We go inside CNN, where staffers are in full-blown panic after a shocking twist delivered the network to the MAGA-friendly David Ellison. We discuss how Netflix's deal for CNN's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, collapsed. And, most importantly, we break down what is to come for the network now that Bari Weiss is positioned to take charge.

Plus, we take a look at Tucker Carlson’s interview with Mike Huckabee, in which the right-wing extremist humiliated the U.S. Ambassador. And we save some parting words for Ben Shapiro, who shredded Candace Owens this week as “evil.”

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