“The imprisonment of a reporter who is nonwhite and enters the U.S. demonstrates how the approach of Mr. Trump’s government is based on racist and discriminatory policies within an apartheid regime,” Mr. Qassemi told state television. “We hope that this innocent person is unconditionally released soon.”
Nader Talebzadeh, an Iranian writer and filmmaker who has worked with Ms. Hashemi, described her arrest as a “concocted plan by the Trump administration” to elicit a reaction from Iran. “This is intimidation and a provocation against Iran,” he said.
Ms. Hashemi was born Melanie Franklin in New Orleans and converted to Islam. She has long publicly supported the 1979 Islamic Revolution and is married to an Iranian. Ms. Hashemi is one of the main anchors at Press TV, which was established by Iran’s state television to spread the country’s message around the globe. It is a part of the Voice and Vision organization of Iran, a powerful state media organization that is widely seen as a tool of the country’s hard-line factions.
The station has featured interviews with Western analysts often critical of their own governments, and Ms. Hashemi has filed reports on discrimination against women, Muslims and African-Americans in the United States.
Press TV has found itself enmeshed in several controversies, including in 2010 when it broadcast a confession given under duress by Maziar Bahari, a Canadian-Iranian journalist who was arrested in 2009 while covering the Iranian elections for Newsweek. The British telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, fined Press TV 100,000 pounds and in 2012 revoked the station’s license, saying the station had failed to pay the fine and address issues of its independence.
In 2016, two executives at the station were suspended after a prominent newscaster said she had been sexually harassed by them for years.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/world/middleeast/iran-us-journalist-arrest.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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