Ettela'at

Ettela'at Newspaper
TypeDaily newspaper
Owner(s)Iran Chap Organisation
Founder(s)Abbas Massoudi
PublisherIran Chap Organisation
EditorAbbas Salehi
Founded10 July 1926; 98 years ago (1926-07-10)
Political alignmentConservative
HeadquartersTehran, Iran
Websiteettelaat.com

Ettela'at (Persian: اطلاعات, romanized: Ettelâ'ât, lit. 'Information') is a Persian-language daily newspaper of record published in Tehran, Iran. It is among the oldest publications in the country, and the oldest running Persian daily newspaper in the world.[1] The paper has a conservative stance,[2] and focuses on political, cultural, social, and economic news.[3] Until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the newspaper was associated with its chief founder Abbas Massoudi (1895–1974).[4]

History and profile

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Ettala'at was started by Abbas Massoudi in 1926 as a four-page paper and sold nearly 2,000 copies per week.[5][6] The circulation of the paper was 15,000 copies during the reign of Reza Shah.[5] At the beginning of World War II. the paper was expanded and had eight pages.[6]

Ettala'at supported Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during his reign.[7] One of the editors-in-chief was Hassan Sayyed Javadi, younger brother of Ali Sayyed Javadi, another journalist with Kayhan, and Ahmad Sayyed Javadi, sometime interior minister of the Islamic government.[8] In the late 1960s the publisher of the paper was Abbas Massoudi who served as the vice president of the Iranian Senate.[9]

On 6 January 1978, an article appeared in Ettela'at, suggesting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was a British agent serving colonialism.[10] The article also challenged Khomeini's Iranian origins and claimed that he had been living an immoral life.[11] The next day, clerics in Qom protested and the police demanded they disperse.[11] When they refused, police opened fire and at least twenty people were killed. Iranian media displayed outrage, which increased tensions leading up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.[10][11] During the clashes between the Imperial forces and revolutionaries, Kayhan and Ettela'at was censored in October 1978.[12]

Following the revolution, Ettela'at became a state-sponsored publication together with Kayhan and Jomhouri-e Eslami of which publishers are directly appointed by the Supreme Leader.[13]

On 31 January 1979, Kayhan and Ettela'at announced that Khomeini would return from Paris the next day. Ettela'at's title was "tomorrow morning at 9, visiting Imam in Tehran." The news led to the flow of millions of people from different cities to Tehran.[14] In 1979, the newspaper published a photo known as Firing Squad in Iran, showing Kurdish militants being executed by Iranian authorities. The photo would later go on to win the 1980 Pulitzer Prize, attributed to "Anonymous", but later was revealed in 2006 to be Jahangir Razmi.

See also

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Citations

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  1. ^ Parvin 1998, pp. 58–62.
  2. ^ Arash Karami (15 March 2014). "Iran's Fourth Estate". Asharq Al Awsat. Archived from the original on 13 April 2015. Retrieved 22 September 2014.
  3. ^ Abdolrasoul Jowkar; Fereshteh Didegah (2010). "Evaluating Iranian newspapers' web sites using correspondence analysis". Library Hi Tech. 28 (1): 119–130. doi:10.1108/07378831011026733.
  4. ^ Liora Handelman-Baavur (2019). Creating the modern Iranian woman: popular culture between two revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 61. ISBN 978-1-108-62799-3. OCLC 1127288640.
  5. ^ a b Mushira Eid (1 January 2002). The World of Obituaries: Gender across Cultures and over Time. Wayne State University Press. p. 52. ISBN 0-8143-3655-8.
  6. ^ a b Camron Michael Amin (2004). "Importing "Beauty Culture" into Iran in the 1920s and 1930s: Mass Marketing Individualism in an Age of Anti-Imperialist Sacrifice". Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 24 (1): 84. doi:10.1215/1089201X-24-1-81. S2CID 145745951.
  7. ^ Ahmad Faroughy (1 December 1974). "Repression in Iran". Index on Censorship. 3 (4): 15. doi:10.1080/03064227408532367. S2CID 143139528.
  8. ^ Amir Taheri (2 July 2018). "Leading Iranian Writer Dies in Exile". Asharq Al Awsat. London. Archived from the original on 23 July 2021. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
  9. ^ Roham Alvandi (2010). "Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and the Bahrain Question, 1968–1970". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 37 (2): 168. doi:10.1080/13530191003794723. S2CID 159639635.
  10. ^ a b Sandra Mackey; W. Scott Harrop (1996). The Iranians: Persia, Islam, and the Soul of a Nation. Dutton. p. 278. ISBN 978-0-525-94005-0.
  11. ^ a b c Mehrzad Boroujerdi; Kourosh Rahimkhani (2018). Postrevolutionary Iran. A Political Handbook. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0815635741. Archived from the original on 21 September 2021. Retrieved 29 August 2021.
  12. ^ Nicholas M. Nikazmerad (1980). "A Chronological Survey of the Iranian Revolution". Iranian Studies. 13 (1/4): 336. doi:10.1080/00210868008701575. JSTOR 4310346.
  13. ^ Mahmud Farjami (2014). "Political Satire as an Index of Press Freedom: A Review of Political Satire in the Iranian Press during the 2000s". Iranian Studies. 47 (2): 233. doi:10.1080/00210862.2013.860325. S2CID 145067513.
  14. ^ "11 Bahman 1357, tomorrow morning at 9, visiting Imam in Tehran".

General and cited references

[edit]
  • Parvin, Nassereddin (1998). "EṬṬELĀʿĀT". Encyclopaedia Iranica. Vol. IX, Fasc. 1. pp. 58–62.
[edit]
  • Media related to Ettela'at at Wikimedia Commons
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