An illustration of how prevalent honor/shame is in Iranian media ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Sunday, July 06, 2025

An illustration of how prevalent honor/shame is in Iranian media

Here is the current Tehran Times English language homepage. I color coded articles as to whether they are meant to honor Iran or shame Iran's enemies.

There was no third category.

In fact, every article on that page is meant to either praise Iran (and Iranian leaders) or insult Israel/the West.

Even the sports and culture sections!

In other words, it is pure propaganda.

By contrast, here is the home page of YNet, Yediot Aharonot's English site.

You can argue with some categorizations, but the articles are either self-critical of Israel, somewhat proud, or straight news/analysis.

None of them is trying to shame Iran (or Hamas, for that matter.)

This is the difference between Israel and its neighbors in a nutshell.

Israel is self-critical, cares about the truth, and Israeli media are independent and won't become sycophantic.

Iran is deathly afraid of any news that could shame it, and shaming its enemies is an equally high priority to self-aggrandizement - with no room for, you know, news.

If you don't understand the honor/shame mentality, you cannot begin to understand the Middle East. And too many Western analysts and "experts" simply either think that everyone has a Western mindset - or they themselves have adopted the honor/shame mindset in their own analysis.