Inside Iran

Arash - a journalist - in his group blog (Hanooz) writes (original is in Persian):

Journalism in this land, is a strange habit! We are only making ourselves happy to feel that “we write”. There are many habits; good and bad. And journalism is one of those many.
Our journalism is sick. It is dying and only makes dictatorships landscape more colorful ( Dictatorship points to us and says “Yes there are many voices, you can see various ideas here”.
When a few simple employees of “National Security” (Mention! A few simple emloyees) can dictate us what to write and even HOW to write and how to ANALYZE, freedom of expression is a nonsense humor in this dictatorship land.
When writing about high prices is forbidden, when writing about teachers and workers issues is an unforgivable crime and when I have to write whatever those few simple employees tells me, why do we need this much journalist, newspapers, offices and … ? We can spend our time with those govermental newspapers and we can believe that “there is freedom of expression”

I liked the post and I like the brave man who wrote these. As you may know in Iran all the newspapers are under censorship (and self-censorship) and any printed material should have an licence from government. If you want to publish a newspaper or a magazine or a book you have to ask for a licence and this licence can take years to be ready. So owners of newspapers or magazines can not risk their licence for criticizing.