“Sara Melotti, a young Italian travel photographer, talks about her experience of visiting Iran. "I wanted to see Iran. I wanted to feel the charm of ancient Persia, admire the intricate and colorful designs of its architecture, taste the incredibly diverse dishes, soak in the multilayered culture and live its well known heart-warming hospitality on my own skin; and thanks to SurfIran I did it all, on a dream of a road trip I'll never forget." “ • SURFIRAN

"The public image of American journalism has always included a good proportion of myth. Well before the Second World War, Broadway and Hollywood had made the stereotype of the Intrepid Reporter—dogged in his pursuit of the truth, fearless in his determination to see it printed—nearly as familiar as the white hats that identified the good guys in a Western. The war made legends out of such foreign correspondents as Ernie Pyle and Margaret Bourke-White; in the cold-war years that followed, with their prolonged emphasis on foreign affairs, the image of the newspaper correspondent came to be fixed in a new stereotype, but one every bit as solid, and as favorable, as the old one of Hollywood.

Television was at first merely an instrument of this myth, but in the mid-1950s it grew to be something more. With the development of national network news programs, the legend came to life. Combining the events of the day with the actual faces and voices of individual correspondents, television brought forth the Intrepid Reporter before our eyes, and in the process created a new kind of journalism. Today TV news is an American institution, and in Edward Jay Epstein’s latest book it has now received a serious study of its operation. In News from Nowhere Epstein examines the processes by which network news programs are created and the institutional factors which shape those processes. His discoveries are thoroughly deflating to the myth of the Intrepid Reporter." • David Ernest Haight – Commentary Magazine

“American media is always pro-war: Can you name a single paper, or a single TV network, that was unequivocally opposed to the American wars carried out against Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam while they were happening, or shortly thereafter? Or even opposed to any two of these seven wars? How about one?

In 1968, six years into the Vietnam War, the Boston Globe (Feb. 18, 1968) surveyed the editorial positions of 39 leading U.S. papers concerning the war and found that “none advocated a pull-out.” Has the phrase “invasion of Vietnam” ever appeared in the U.S. mainstream media? In 2003, leading cable station MSNBC took the much-admired Phil Donahue off the air because of his opposition to the calls for war in Iraq.”

• Global Research

“Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.” • Edward Bernays, The Father of Public Relations (Year: 1928)

“In our present social organization approval of the public is essential to any large undertaking. Hence a laudable movement may be lost unless it impresses itself on the public mind. Charity, as well as business, and politics and literature, for that matter, have had to adopt propaganda, for the public must be regimented into giving money just as it must be regimented into tuberculosis prophylaxis. The Near East Relief, the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor of New York, and all the rest, have to work on public opinion just as though they had tubes of tooth paste to sell. We are proud of our diminishing infant death rate—and that too is the work of propaganda.

Propaganda does exist on all sides of us, and it does change our mental pictures of the world. Even if this be unduly pessimistic—and that remains to be proved—the opinion reflects a tendency that is undoubtedly real. In fact, its use is growing as its efficiency in gaining public support is recognized. This then, evidently indicates the fact that any one with sufficient influence can lead sections of the public at least for a time and for a given purpose. Formerly the rulers were the leaders. They laid out the course of history, by the simple process of doing what they wanted. And if nowadays the successors of the rulers, those whose position or ability gives them power, can no longer do what they want without the approval of the masses, they find in propaganda a tool which is increasingly powerful in gaining that approval. Therefore, propaganda is here to stay.

It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind. The American government and numerous patriotic agencies developed a technique which, to most persons accustomed to bidding for public acceptance, was new. They not only appealed to the individual by means of every approach—visual, graphic, and auditory—to support the national endeavor, but they also secured the cooperation of the key men in every group —persons whose mere word carried authority to hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers. They thus automatically gained the support of fraternal, religious, commercial, patriotic, social and local groups whose members took their opinions from their accustomed leaders and spokesmen, or from the periodical publications which they were accustomed to read and believe. At the same time, the manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of the mental cliches and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror and the tyranny of the enemy. It was only natural, after the war ended, that intelligent persons should ask themselves whether it was not possible to apply a similar technique to the problems of peace.” • Edward Bernays, The Father of PR (Year: 1928)

The U.S. Military’s Hollywood Connection: An Example of Effective Public Relations

“The Department of Defense regularly cooperates with Hollywood on projects large and small, from Lifetime’s fictional Army base-set series “Army Wives” and CBS’ naval police procedural “NCIS” to Paramount Pictures’ warring robots franchise “Transformers” and Sony’s Columbia Pictures film “Battle: Los Angeles,” about Marines fighting an alien invasion. The military has allowed Universal Pictures to film its upcoming action movie “Battleship” on the battleship Missouri and permitted Navy SEALs to appear in Relativity Media’s February thriller “Act of Valor. Over the decades, the relationship between Hollywood and the military has served the needs of both sides: Filmmakers gain access to equipment, locations, personnel and information that lend their productions authenticity, while the armed forces get some measure of control over how they’re depicted.

That’s important not just for recruiting but also for guiding the behavior of current troops and appealing to the U.S. taxpayers who foot the bills. Given that less than 1% of the U.S. population is currently serving in the military, entertainment — including movies, TV shows and video games — is key to shaping the public’s idea of what it means to be a soldier.” • Rebecca Keegan, Los Angeles Times

Iranian Leviathan: A Monumental History of Mithra's Abode by Jason Reza Jorjani

“No other nation on Earth has contributed more to the elevation of the human spirit, and to the enrichment of every aspect of civilization on a global scale, than Iran. Some of the most defining scientific, religious, and cultural characteristics of both the Eastern and Western Worlds actually owe their origin to Iran, let alone the contributions that Iran has made to the formation of the so-called “Islamic World.” The latter is almost entirely Iranian in terms of its high culture, and if “Islamic Civilization” is to have any future at all, it needs to be transformed back into Iranian Civilization….As an original work of Philosophy, Iranian Leviathan explores fundamental concepts in the realm of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. With respect to socio-political thought, this philosophical history lays the groundwork for the ideological program of an Iranian Renaissance. This is a bold and unapologetic vision, not only for the revitalization of culture within Greater Iran, but also for the reestablishment of Iran as an imperial hegemon and global superpower in our time.” • goodreads.com

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Iran Is Not What You Think • 11 Reasons Why You'll Fall in Love With Iran's People

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Media bosses admit pro-war bias in coverage of Iraq • Media Bias in The United States • History of Public Relations

Propaganda: History Is A Weapon! • News From Nowhere • News from Nowhere, by Edward Jay Epstein

Iranian Leviathan: A Monumental History of Mithra's Abode • Mithra • Muslim Conquest of Persia