Fars News Agency

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Fars (Pars) News Agency
File:Fars News Agency.jpg
Fars News Agency logo
Abbreviation FNA
Formation 2003; 21 years ago (2003)
Type News agency
Location
Official language
 Persian, English, Arabic, Turkish
Managing Director
 Seyed Nezamozddin Musavi
Morteza Ghamari Vafa
Website  • farsnews.com (in Persian)
 • english.farsnews.com (in English)
 • fna.ir (Shorten Link)

The Fars News Agency (FNA) is a news agency in Iran. While it describes itself as "Iran's leading independent news agency",[1] news organizations such as CNN and Reuters describe it as a "semi-official" news agency.[2][3]

History and profile

Fars News Agency, a privately owned agency, was founded in 2003.[4] In addition to Persian reporting, the agency also provides news in English,[5] Turkish[6] and Arabic.[7]

Interview with Egyptian president

In June 2012, Farsnews released an interview with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in which he wanted a strategic alliance with Iran. The Egyptian news agency MENA has disputed the authenticity of this interview.[8] This was while Farsnews provided the audio files for the interview.[9][10] Furthermore, in an interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Dustour (Egypt), Hisham Abd ul-Fatah Al-Bakli, Farsnews correspondent for Egypt defended the authenticity of the interview arguing that Morsi's presidential office did not have the authority to reject an interview that was arranged by Morsi's electoral campaign committee that was then defunct once Morsi won the elections. He argued that Morsi had made similar remarks in interviews with Egyptian press, and the media frenzy over the alleged fabrication was created by the rival Arab and Western media who disliked the widespread coverage of the Arab Spring by the Iranian news agency.[11]

Reposted "news" story by The Onion

In September 2012, the agency picked up – as fact – a story from The Onion, a satirical newspaper, about a supposed survey showing "an overwhelming majority of rural white Americans would rather vote for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than U.S. President Barack Obama in the upcoming U.S. elections".[12][13] Fars News Agency later apologized for its mistake, with excuse that leading Western media "also had many similar goofs".[14]

The Iranian version copied the original word-for-word, even including a made-up quote from a fictional West Virginia resident who says he would rather go to a baseball game with Ahmadinejad because "he takes national defense seriously, and he'd never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does."[12][13]

"Time machine" story

In April 2013, the agency carried a story claiming a 27-year-old Iranian scientist had invented a time machine that allowed people to see into the future. A few days later the story was removed, and replaced with a story quoting an Iranian government official that no such device had been registered.[15][16]

"Tall White Alien" story

In January 2014, the agency re-posted a news article that suggested U.S. security policy is being driven by "Tall White Aliens" that the U.S. inherited from Adolf Hitler.[17] This was widely misreported as Fars News' original work, and subsequently suggested that Fars News is unreliable due to being a platform for conspiracy theories.[18][19][20] Fars News subsequently updated the article with a message emphasizing that Fars News doesn't agree or disagree with the content of the article, as well as attacked other news agencies for the intentional misattribution of the article's content to Fars News. The update went on to specify that Fars News specifically published that report because other media outlets had ignored it, and mentioned that American press outlet Reuters had been driving the Nazi-UFO conspiracy as late as 1957.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/01/15/Iran-s-Fars-News-U-S-is-run-by-secret-alien-regime-.html
  19. ↑ http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-fars-us-policy-aliens-hitler-snowden/25228985.html
  20. ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/13/iran-nsa-aliens_n_4590910.html

External links

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