Any color but green

Opinion: March 3, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By SAHAR SEPEHRI

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

WASHINGTON — An Iranian newspaper with a record of needling the regime has been forced to change its masthead because authorities claimed that the stylized Persian calligraphy appeared to depict a naked ballerina.

The order, along with others affecting the media, appears to reflect a heightened sensitivity on the part of the government to the slightest hint of a challenge since the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The action against the Tehran Today newspaper was ordered by Mohammad Ali Ramin, the associate minister of culture and Islamic guidance and one of Ahmadinejad’s close advisers. Ramin issued a statement telling the newspaper to change its logo and accusing it of being part of a “soft war” against the regime.

At first, Rasoul Babayi, the paper’s editor, thought the order was a joke.

But when he saw posters advertising the newspaper masthead being torn down, “I realized the situation was getting beyond a joke.”

It’s not the first time the newspaper has been in trouble. In June 2009, the Tehran public prosecutor banned it for “publishing articles and images insulting President Ahmadinejad” after it printed a 16-page supplement criticizing the administration’s economic, cultural and political policies.

Meanwhile, the regime is becoming increasingly sensitive to color as well.

Even since the color green has come to represent the opposition movement, the authorities have attempted to eliminate the color wherever it appears.

Green barred

In January, one of the most popular Iranian TV sports programs, Barnameye Navad, was temporarily taken off the air after numerous callers voted for the program’s graphics to adopt a green bar. When the program returned to the air, the green bar was gone.

There are even indications that the country’s flag is not immune to color correction. On three separate occasions during appearances by president, the green in the country’s tri-color flag appeared to mysteriously morph to blue.

Sahar Sepehri is a journalist in Washington who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services