Etemad Newspaper Forced to Retract its Headline
After Etemad newspaper published a report on the “failed” trip of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Rome to attend an international meeting of the Food and Agricultural Organization, the President’s office officially asked the newspaper to announce Ahmadinejad’s trip to FAO as “successful” in its headline the next morning, while also publishing the response of the office to the newspaper’s original story.Etemad newspaper is owned by prominent ayatollah Mehdi Karubi, a senior cleric, politician and Speaker of the Majlis (Iran’s parliament) who was also a candidate during the last presidential elections in 2005, with a record of criticizing policies of the current administration.
Editorializing that the President was given a cold welcome by Italian officials, it wrote, “While Ahmadinejad’s visit, and that of his accompanying team, was initially planned for a 3-day stay, lack of proper coordination cut the visit short to a single day. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ended his 16 hour visit of Rome without meeting with any senior Italian officials.”
Just a few hours after the distribution of the newspaper, the office of Iran’s President sent a response to Etemad and emphatically requested that it be published in the next issue of the daily. Because of this, Etemad had no choice but to change its headline on Monday to the requested words of “The information Published in Yesterday’s Issue of Etemad was Incorrect”, and replaced it with “Ahmadinejad’s Successful Presence at the FAO session.”
The President’s response to Etemad’s story said that the daily’s report was a kind of psychological warfare and in line with what Zionist media outside the country engaged in”.
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