Iranian Media: the Paradox of Modernity

Iranian Media Routledge Advances in Internationalizing Media Studies 1. Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia Edited by Youna Kim 2. Internationalizing Internet Studies Beyond Anglophone Paradigms Edited by Gerard Goggin and Mark McLelland 3. Iranian Media The Paradox of Modernity Gholam Khiabany Forthcoming: Media Globalization and the Discovery Channel Networks Ole Mjos Iranian Media The Paradox of Modernity Gholam Khiabany New York London First published 2010 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf- ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Khiabany, Gholam. Iranian media : the paradox modernity / by Gholam Khiabany. p. cm.—(Routledge advances in internationalizing media studies ; 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-415-96289-6 1. Press and politics—Iran—History—20th century. 2. Government and the press—Iran—History—20th century. 3. Mass media policy—Iran—History—20th century. 4. Mass media—Religious aspects—Islam. 5. Freedom of the press— Iran—History—20th century. 6. Women and journalism—Iran—History—20th century. 7. Women’s periodicals, Persian—Iran—History—20th century. I. Title. PN4748.I7K45 2009 302.230955—dc22 2008051957 ISBN 0-203-87641-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-96289-7 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-87641-5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-96289-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-87641-1 (ebk) Contents List of Tables vii Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1 Religion, State, and Culture: Beyond Islamic Exceptionalism 22 2 Is there an Islamic Communication Theory? 54 3 Iranian Press: The Paradox of ‘Modernity’ 74 4 Emerging Public Spheres and the Limits of the Press 92 5 Press, State and Civil Society: Illusions and Realities 120 6 Media Policy under the Islamic Republic: Rights, Institutional Interests, and Control 138 7 The Politics of Broadcasting: Continuity and Change, Expansion and Control 159 8 Women’s Press and the Gendered Nature of the Public Sphere 182 Conclusion 210 Notes 223 Bibliography 231 Index 245 Tables 2.1 Information Society versus Islamic Society 65 3.1 Daily Newspaper Number and Circulation in Iran 79 3.2 Radio and Television Receivers: Total and Number per 1,000 Inhabitants 80 3.3 Human Development Indicators in Selected Middle Eastern Countries & United States 81 3.4 Access to Communications in Selected Middle Eastern Countries & United States 83 3.5 Major Media Players in Iran and Their Interests 87 4.1 Cultural Productions: 1998–2000 114 4.2 162 Years of Iranian Press 117 5.1 Number of Licences Given by PSB between 1990–2000 129 5.2 Authorized Press, by Concessionaire 1996–2000 131 8.1 Women’s Press between the Constitutional Revolution and the Establishment of the Pahlavi Era 185 8.2 The Number of Candidates and Elected Parliamentarians in Iran 197 8.3 Number of Women Proprietors and Editors in Iran in 2000 207 Preface The post-revolutionary state in Iran has tried to amalgamate ‘Sharia with electricity’ and modernity with what it considers as ‘Islam’. While sym- pathetic to private capital, through quasi anti-capitalist politics, the state began to restrict market relations, confi scated major assets of sections of the Iranian bourgeoisie, and nationalized major aspects of Iran’s industry, including its communications system. Since the end of war with Iraq and the start of the process of ‘reconstruction’, market-driven development and economic policies have been key aims of the state. This process has been anything but smooth. The state’s policy has been contested by ongoing popular protest as a result of further fragmentation of the ruling elites and intensifi cation of internal factionalism and disputes over the state’s policies, their implications, and the very defi nition and nature of the Islamic state. This book is an attempt to partially redress the balance of the absence of a critical examination of the media in the region in general and Iran in particular. It examines key aspects of the contradictions and tensions in the Iranian media market, social stratifi cation, and competing forms of ‘Isla- mism’/nationalism by looking at the context of production and consumption of the media in Iran. It provides an overview of the expansion of the Iranian communication system, and by examining the role of the state in this process and the economic realities of the media in Iran, it challenges, on the one hand, the essentialist reading of the Iranian state and media and argues that the nature of Iranian media in general and the press in particular cannot be understood simply in terms of ‘Islamic ideology’ or the beloved dichotomy of modernization theory: modernity versus tradition. On the other hand it provides a critique of the one-dimensional liberal focus on the repressive role of the state and argues against the misguided view of political economy which sees the centrality of capital, class, and the state to media as irrelevant in the global South. It suggests that the under- standing of the entanglement of change and continuity, expansion and control, and the continuing role of the Iranian state remain crucial factors and as central as they have been. Acknowledgments Various friends and colleagues have kindly provided me with support, reading lists, references, as well as their valuable time to discuss what appears here under my name. I would like to thank Ghazal, Elham, and Shohreh for a regular supply of books and journals from Iran. I have benefi ted immeasurably from my discussions with Kamal and his rare intellectual insight. Haim Bresheeth, Mike Chopra-Gant, Shehina Fazal, Lena Jayussi, Anthony McNicholas, Tarik Sabry, Naomi Sakr, Roza Tsagarousianou, David Ward, and Milly Williamson read parts or the whole of the manu- scripts and helped me by their comments, criticism, and editorial assis- tance. My appreciation goes to all of them for their generous and kind support and friendship. A special debt of gratitude goes to my colleagues at the Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University. In particular I would like to thank Anna Gough-Yates for being a supportive Academic Leader. I am grateful to Bill Osgerby, Wendy Wheeler, and Paul Cobley, members of Research Capability Fund Committee, for their kind support and for funding some welcomed teaching relief in the last couple of years. Annabelle Sreberny and I wrote an earlier version of Chapter 8 which was published in Naomi Sakr (ed; 2005) Women and Media in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris). I would like to express my thanks to her for permission to include this chapter as well as her exceptional intellectual and moral support. Her contribution, however, and as should be clear by a quick glance at the references, has been far greater. I thank her for this and for many hours of discussion about media, Iran, and life. Earlier versions of Chapters 5 and 7 appeared in Mehdi Semati (ed; 2008) Uncovering Iran: Media, Culture, and Society (New York: Routledge); and David Ward (ed; 2008) Television and Public Policy: Change and Continuity in an Era of Liberalization (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), respectively. I am grateful to I.B. Tauris and Routledge for permission to republish these chapters. I am also grateful to Natalie Foster and Max Novick of Rout- ledge who saw the merit in my proposal and encouraged it. I would like to express my appreciation of Erica Wetter, research editor in Humanities at Routledge for her patience and support. xii Acknowledgments My deepest gratitude goes to Colin Sparks, my supervisor, friend, and mentor, for his valuable guidance, encouragement, exemplary attitudes that went beyond the call of duty, and above all for keeping up pres- sure and his unwillingness to compromise on standards and quality. And fi nally, I want to thank my partner and best friend Parisa, who began to think this project would never end but did not allow that to assuage her support. This is for her. Introduction This is a study of the Iranian media, particularly the press, under the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is an attempt to partially redress the balance of the absence of a critical examination of the media in the region as whole and in Iran in particular. It is organized around a number of interrelated themes which account for an important aspect of formation, development/ underdevelopment of the media in Iran, namely the interaction between revolution, state, religion, and economy. The main proposition of this study is that the nature of the Iranian media, especially that of the press, cannot be understood simply in terms of ‘Islamic ideology’ or the beloved dichotomy of modernization theory: modernity versus tradition. It questions the claims that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the formation of the Islamic Republic represent a distinctly new epoch in Iran’s history and that of the Iranian media.

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