Last week, Press TV, "the first Iranian international news network, broadcasting in English on a round-the-clock basis," ran a story about how happy Jews living in Iran are and how recent news reports about mass emigration of Iranian Jews are lies. The problem is that at least part of that story was plagiarised from The People's Cube, which is a parody news site. So Press TV copied a parody, and then presented it as true. Check out this link to see The People's Cube's open letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran, explaining the parody.
One of the problems that countries without a free press run into is that they don't recognize parody and satire. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. For example, in one famous incident Beijing China's largest newspaper , the Beijing Evening News, fell victim to a similar mistake. It copied an article from The Onion which stated that the U.S. Congress was threatening to leave Washington D.C. for Memphis or Charlotte unless Washington built them a new Capitol with a retractable dome. You can check out a report of this incident here.
However, I have to say that the current situation with Press TV is even better. When the target of a satire or parody can't even recognize it as satire or parody, it just makes the original satire even better.
Monday, December 31
Not recognizing satire makes it even better
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2 comments:
Thanks for the insightful comment about our story. I expanded on it at some length here (it's a comment to the original thread).
Your observation that not recognizing parody and satire is characteristic of totalitarian regimes without a free press is correct, but that does not explain why the Western "progressives" are in the same league as well. I think the main reason here is the irrational worldview that the "progressives" and the Islamofascists share. When there are no moral and intellectual standards, how can one distinguish truth from fiction?
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