Please, No Glowing Eulogies for the “Butcher of Tehran”
Have some respect for the Iranian people.
“Iran’s president and foreign minister die in helicopter crash at moment of high tensions in Mideast,” Jon Gambrell revealed the blockbuster news for the Associated Press on May 20, 2024.
Though details are still thin, reports indicate a helicopter crash with no survivors.
“Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and the country’s foreign minister were found dead Monday hours after their helicopter crashed in fog, leaving the Islamic Republic without two key leaders as extraordinary tensions grip the wider Middle East,” reported Gambrell for the AP.
State-controlled Iranian news outlets are notoriously unreliable, especially when reporting on matters deemed sensitive to the ruling regime. But helicopter crashes, especially those in remote locations, as this one was purported to be, aren’t often survivable. Without immediate medical attention, survivors of a helicopter crash aren’t likely to last long.
Should the reports prove true that the Iranian president was killed this week in a helicopter accident, news media outlets ought to think carefully before eulogizing Iran’s president in overly fawning or glowing terms.