The New York Times ignited a firestorm of criticism on Saturday with an obituary-style headline that appeared to sanitize the legacy of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans long-serving Supreme Leader, who was killed in U.S.-Israeli military strikes.
According to RedState, the Times went full austere religious scholar mode in its treatment of a man whose regime has spent decades exporting terror and crushing its own citizens. The papers headline read, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Power, Is Dead at 86, a formulation that many readers saw as disturbingly admiring in tone for a theocrat who presided over mass executions, hostage-taking, and relentless anti-American incitement.
You can feel the subtle praisepraise!dripping from your computer screen as you read that out loud, can't you? one critic observed, capturing the exasperation of conservatives who have long accused legacy outlets of reserving their harshest language for Western figures while soft-pedaling the crimes of Americas enemies. The reaction online was swift, with commentators accusing the Times of laundering Khameneis reputation under the guise of sober obituary writing.
To its credit, the sub-headline offered a more candid assessment, but that only underscored the problem. As Irans second supreme leader, he brutally crushed dissent at home and expanded Irans footprint abroad, challenging Saudi Arabia for regional dominance, the Times added, a line that many users pointed out would be invisible to those who only see the main headline in social media feeds or search results.
In an era when most readers skim headlines rather than full articles, that distinction matters. Critics argued that the primary framingHard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Powercasts Khamenei as a kind of tough but effective statesman, rather than the architect of a terror state whose proxies have shed American and Israeli blood for decades.
The backlash did not come only from conservative commentators but from a broad swath of social media users who saw the coverage as part of a pattern. Critics, including prominent voices on social media, blasted the framing as yet another example of legacy media soft-pedaling a brutal theocrat responsible for decades of terrorism, repression of his own people, and anti-American aggression.
For many on the right, this episode was simply further confirmation of what they have been saying for years about the corporate press. You simply can hate the media enough. When we speak of being the enemy of the people, this is exactly the kind of nonsense we're talking about, one commentator remarked, arguing that such coverage erodes public trust and reveals a deep ideological bias.
The controversy also revived memories of another infamous obituary framing from the Washington Post. Most lampooned the Times and compared it to the Washington Post's handling of the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, whom they famously described as an austere religious scholar.
If anything, the Washington Post may have managed to sink even lower in its treatment of Khameneis death. The Washington Post, however, may have outdone even the Times in handling of the announcement of the Death of Ayatollah Khameini; they eulogized him by describing his bushy white beard and easy smile.
No, I'm not kidding, one critic wrote, as readers circulated a passage that sounded more like a gentle character sketch than a description of a tyrant. Read how the WaPo is describing the Ayatollah Khamenei tonight: With his bushy white beard and easy smile, Ayatollah Khamenei cut a more avuncular figure in public than his perpetually scowling but much more revered mentor, and he was known to be fond of Persian poetry and
The effect was to humanize and even sentimentalize a man whose security forces have gunned down protesters in the streets and imprisoned dissidents for daring to speak. Fond of Persian poetry, and with a beard you could just scratch as if you were sitting on Santa's lap, is how the coverage effectively read to many outraged observers.
Conservatives argued that it would have been both accurate and morally necessary to use language that reflected the true nature of Khameneis rule. Guys and gals in the media, it would have been super-easy and completely logical to add various descriptors such as: hardline sadist, terrorist sympathizer, and murderer when describing Khamenei.
The double standard becomes even more glaring when one compares the treatment of Khamenei to that of controversial Western figures. Contrast what the New York Times did for Khamenei to their headline announcing the death of Dilbert creator Scott Adams; Adams was denigrated with a description that noted his popular comic strip was a sensation until he made racist comments.
As critics pointed out, the Times seemed more comfortable morally condemning a cartoonist for offensive remarks than a dictator whose regime has overseen torture, executions, and chants of Death to America. The New York Times gave the Ayatollah of Iran a nicer obituary headline than they did Scott Adams, one viral post noted, highlighting the warped priorities of elite media.
That comparison raises an unavoidable question about moral clarity in journalism. Which one of these is worse here, folks? The guy who made comments you didn't like, or the man behind numerous mass executions of his own people, and viewed the United States as the Great Satan and consistently endorsed the slogan Death to America.
For readers who still expect the press to distinguish clearly between flawed Western figures and sworn enemies of American liberty, the answer is obvious. It doesn't take a scholaraustere or otherwiseto figure that out.
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