On December 4, the New York Times published an article reporting Iran’s decision to abolish its morality police following mounting anti-government protests over the untimely murder of Mahsa Amini in September. The headline was quickly picked up by other major Western outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and CBS News, interpreting the move as a “rare concession” to the protest movement and sparking rumors that the regime may finally be attending to popular demands for reform in Iran. Hours later, the report was debunked. Yet it lives on, a testament to the damage that can be done by a western media uninterested in facts and more concerned with narratives.

This false fact was born, like many others, from an interpretation of information that did not actually add up to the story being told. In remarks at a press conference on December 3, Iran’s attorney general Mohammad Javad Montazeri said the morality police “had nothing to do with the judiciary system,” but that it was “abolished by those who created it.” His comments were in response to a question about the waning presence of the morality police in the streets since protests began roughly 12 weeks ago. Setting aside the fact that off-the-cuff remarks by one official do not equal an immediate change in policy, the morality police is not under the jurisdiction of the judiciary (which Montazeri made clear himself). Indeed, no official authority in Iran—including the Interior Ministry, which is actually in charge of the morality police—has confirmed his statement, and there have since been reports that security forces in Iran may have actually ramped up their enforcement of the hijab.

But the misleading reporting by the American press speaks to a larger issue across coverage of the protest movement—nobody seems to know what is actually going on. Most Western publications cannot safely send journalists to Iran for on-the-ground exposure, forcing them to rely on social media posts and Iranian state-media outlets for information. And while what essentially amounts to hearsay and government propaganda should be cause for doubt, the media has largely chosen to run with sensationalist headlines that accept the information at face value.

There are two serious problems underscored by the flawed morality police tales. The first is the security blanket such pieces offer to the regime; as some have noted, when autocratic regimes feel threatened, they often attempt to change the narrative as a way of assuaging domestic pressure and misleading public opinion. Moving the discourse about Iran away from severe human rights violations to potential concessions is a “psychological tool” to weaken protester morale and relieve negative international coverage of the regime. Ultimately, it sends a false message about the state of the movement when there is almost no credible evidence to suggest anything has changed at all. 

But another larger problem is the Biden administration’s refusal to take a definitive stance on the demonstrations in Iran. There have been few public statements from the White House, some of which have even been recanted. Because the US government has remained largely mute, there is no sense of American interest or urgency in what Iranians themselves call a revolution. Absent that political context, much of the reporting appears in a vacuum for American readers who likely can’t parse out what is true and what is not. 

Failing to be vigilant about coverage of the protest movement risks undermining the life-threatening bravery of the Iranian people standing up to their government. The US has been given a rare opportunity to help turn the tide in Iran. Surely this cry for freedom deserves better.

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