The United States’ mainstream media keep silence when it comes to the detention of Press TV’s anchor without any legal basis, says a commentator.
Press TV’s anchor, Marzieh Hashemi, was released on Wednesday after spending 10 days in US detention without charge.
Hashemi, a 59-year-old American-born Muslim convert who has lived in Iran for years, was detained at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in Missouri on January 13th while in the US to visit her ill brother and other family members.
David William Pear, political, economic and historical columnist, told Press TV on Friday that “what is really outrageous is what we have seen, the silence of the mainstream media here in the US.”
“They (the American media) went for days without even mentioning this case, without even mentioning Marzieh and there was no outrage from the press; so, I think it shows our mainstream media – the ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post – all of those are basically government organs that they only report what the government wants them to report,” Pear argued.
US intimidating journalists, academics
Another commentator, Alexander Azadgan, told Press TV that “it is basically a major psychological warfare element to this, no one is spared and they are trying to intimidate anyone and everyone. If they are going to go after Marzieh Hashemi, you can count, they are going to try to intimidate even academics too.”