Two obituaries, two standards: How media framing shapes the legacy of controversial figures
By Brian C. Joondeph | Commentary, American Thinker
How corporate media soften tyrants abroad while sharpening labels at home.
Death is supposed to clarify a life, not distort it.
Obituaries are meant to record history, not rewrite it.
But in today’s corporate media, even death cannot escape ideological spin.
Consider the recent coverage of Ayatollah Ali Khameini, Iran’s Supreme Leader for more than three decades.
In the Washington Post, readers were introduced to a man with a “bushy white beard and easy smile,” an “avuncular figure” fond of Persian poetry and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. Some acquaintances described him as a “closet moderate.”
A closet moderate? That description might surprise the regime’s political prisoners — ...
