I hope the title isn't a misnomer.
I just went to a round table on reporting from/about Iran. It was interesting -- one of the women who spoke was based in Iran until a year or two ago while the other reports almost entirely in absentia. It was curious because both felt like the work they were doing was more accurate or representative of the view of The People than much of what we get in the West -- it's interesting that in this day and age accurate reporting in absentia is possible. Communications are open, the internet is here, people can take videos from their phones -- all this allows you to be connected to sources without physical proximity.</p>
<p>Really what was interesting to me, though, was this: the event was sponsored by Fletcher's own all-stat professor, who is of Persian ancestry; the panel was chaired by student of Persian ancestry; and both journalists were women of Persian origin.</p>
<p>It makes sense, of course it makes sense! Both journalists made the excellent point that long gone are the days when you can ship off a journalist with zero language skills to a region and count on them to shape public opinion back home. Language skills pour over into a multitude of fields-- for example, Istvan Deal wrote so perceptively about Hapsburg Hungary because he spoke Hungarian when few other historians could be bothered.
Thinking about it made me jealous, I guess, of these people who had grown up bilingual and bicultural, ready-equipped to plug the gaps in our understanding of Iran. Is it unfair to suggest that this is a ready-made path? Certainly I don't want to denigrate anyone's achievements or any hurdles they might have leapt (I have no insight into the difficulty of growing up in an immigrant community, for example, nor have I tried to become a journalist or get a PhD), but at the same time it seems to me that beginning a specialist on your could try of origin for the benefit of a foreign audience is a door that's always open.
Perhaps I come at this as someone who would like to be a subject matter expert, but must start from scratch. Sometimes I feel inauthentic -- what right do I have to claim to know a people or a region? But you have to start somewhere.
