Selective Outrage: Why Iran’s Dead Don’t Matter to the Media

In the span of two weeks, an estimated 12,000 Iranian citizens were killed amid internal unrest. Men and women protesting repression, economic collapse, and a theocratic regime that has ruled through fear for decades. And yet, outside a few brief mentions, the international media largely looked away.

At the same time, headlines, panels, campus protests, and social media feeds remain saturated with relentless focus on Palestinians and Israel.

This is not a coincidence but It is a pattern and it exposes a deep moral and structural failure in global journalism and activism.

The first explanation often offered is access. Iran is a closed dictatorship. Foreign journalists are restricted, surveilled, expelled, or imprisoned. The regime shuts down the internet, blocks social media, intimidates families of victims, and obscures casualty figures. Reporting from Iran is dangerous and difficult.

But access alone does not explain silence.

Journalists have historically reported from war zones, dictatorships, and genocides with limited access, from Syria to North Korea to Sudan. When there is will, there is coverage. What is missing in the case of Iran is not only footage, but interest.

Israel, by contrast,........

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