You can hear Terri repeat these unsubstantiated claims and debunked statements here. They are towards the end of the program. I will look for more of Terri’s shows where she has done this (do not have the time right now)

http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..=106422103

A Jewish Teen In Post-Revolutionary Iran

Listen Now [19 min 39 sec] add to playlist | download

Roya Hakakian
Enlarge

Marion Ettlinger

Author, filmmaker and activist Roya Hakakian is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.

Fresh Air from WHYY, July 9, 2009 · Iranian-American author, human rights activist and filmmaker Roya Hakakian discusses growing up Jewish in post-revolutionary Iran.

Professor Juan Cole has debunked the ‘wipe Israel off the map” hogwash.
“As most of my readers know, Ahmadinejad did not use that phrase in Persian. He quoted an old saying of Ayatollah Khomeini calling for ‘this occupation regime over Jerusalem” to “vanish from the page of time.’ Calling for a regime to vanish is not the same as calling for people to be killed. Ahmadinejad has not to my knowledge called for anyone to be killed. (Wampum has more; as does the American Street).

I was talking to two otherwise well-informed Israeli historians a couple of weeks ago, and they expressed the conviction that Ahmadinejad had threatened to nuke Israel. I was taken aback. First of all, Iran doesn’t have a nuke. Second, there is no proof that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program. Third, Ahmadinejad has denied wanting a bomb. Fourth, Ahmadinejad has never threatened any sort of direct Iranian military action against Israel. In other words, that is a pretty dramatic fear for educated persons to feel, on the basis of . . . nothing.

I renew my call to readers to write protest letters to newspapers and other media every time they hear it alleged that Ahmadinejad (or “Iran”!) has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” There is no such idiom in Persian and it is not what he said, and the mistranslation gives entirely the wrong impression. Wars can start over bad translations.

It was apparently some Western wire service that mistranslated the phrase as ‘wipe Israel off the map’, which sounds rather more violent than calling for regime change. Since then, Iranian media working in English have themselves depended on that translation. One of the tricks of Right-Zionist propagandists is to substitute these English texts for Ahmadinejad’s own Persian text. (Ethan Bronner at the New York Times tried to pull this, and more recently Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute.) But good scholarship requires that you go to the original Persian text in search of the meaning of a phrase. Bronner and Rubin are guilty disregarding philological scholarship in favor of mere propagandizing.

These propaganda efforts against Iran and Ahmadinejad also depend on declining to enter into evidence anything else he has ever said– like that it would be wrong to kill Jews! They also ignore that Ahmadinejad is not even the commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces.”

http://www.juancole.com/2007/0…..mitic.html

NPR has an abysmal record when it comes to unbiased reporting and have too often become little more than a propaganda organ for the neoconservatives and the administration.

Fortunately, there are resources available that call them to task. Readers may want to follow the NPR Check blog which regularly reports on their lies, half-truths, and hypocrisy.

Although not specifically focused on NPR, the Columbia Journalism Review does an excellent job of watching the media and both criticizing their failures and praising their successes.
Their “The Audit” blog is especially noteworthy in the business domain.

And of course Glenn Greenwald’s take-downs of NPR Ombudsman Alica Shepard are practically legendary.

” Calling for a regime to vanish is not the same as calling for people to be killed.” is true.

If a guy with a wand in his hand says that, it means one thing. If the leader of a country says it, it means something a bit different.
When Bush was calling for regime change in Iraq, what did that mean to you, Leen?

Ok, let’s try being devil’s advocate, here– I actually heard this very interview, and I confess, I wasn’t aware that that statement had been mistranslated. Don’t doubt it, that’s not the point.

But it also seems to me, especially since she was asking her guest a question, with the supposed quote as background, that her guest had a responsibility to explain the misquotation.

There is also a difference between what Ter ri Gross does and what talk show hosts do. She is not talk show host, she is an interviewer. She interviews people, asking them questions. Generally speaking, she does a far more thorough job researching her subjects — which are the books, films, music, or other accomplishments of her interview guests. Also, she is not primarily an interviewer covering political subjects, her interests lean heavily to the arts.
I think given the above, the standard she should be held to is not quite the same as that of reporters/journalists who are (supposedly) performing a different task with a different goal.

I hold no brief for people who should know better – reporters, pundits – not doing their due diligence.
But I do distinguish between reporters and interviewers who concentrate on artists, with some political types sprinkled in.
Also, Terry gets some points with me just for having been walked out on by our fave wingnut, Bill O’Reilly, who took offense to her questions and stalked off mid-interview.

The lie of the century and Obama repeated it during his speech to AIPAC on June 4/08. He also lied about Iran having a nuclear weapons program. No mention of Israel’s nukes, imagine that. His whole speech was indicative of the stance he would take..Zionist run Israel first, second, and third. Ahmadinejad does not make the decisions and that is well known. He is a figure head. If the truth was told on your MSM, the citizens of the US would realize that the real purpose is to overthrown the true leaders and to put in place a puppet secular leader. Obama is continuing Bush’s crusade against Islam. The Shah’s son has been positioning himself to take over Iran for a number of years now. The mistranslation and the continued use of it was step one in the softening up the public to support another illegal overthrow of a sovereign nation.
****************
“The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat. “

http://www.informationclearing…..e21604.htm

“Rez Pahlavi, who lives in Bethesda, Md., looks eerily like his dad in one of the photos. He denies that he is simply bitter about not getting to be Shah himself, saying, “This is not about me.” He also denies that he is a billionaire, thanks to money taken out of the country by his late father. He claims that while he has been working with exiles seeking to overthrow the current regime, he has had no contact with the CIA or gotten any aid from the U.S. government at all. “

http://www.editorandpublisher……1003988390

“It seems somewhat unlikely that a resident of Potomac will be the next ruler of Iran. But Reza Pahlavi, son of the shah and the country’s former crown prince, is not ruling out anything.

As Tehran’s streets fill with death-to-the-dictator chants, Pahlavi went to the National Press Club yesterday and, in front of 17 television cameras, said he would serve if elected.

“My sole objective is to help my compatriots reach freedom,” Pahlavi said. But if and when that happens, he went on, “I’d like to be able to be in my country one day, come behind such a podium, talk to my people and every other candidate . . . let the people decide.”

Whatever the Iranian demonstrators are seeking, there is little evidence from their Twitter feeds that they are seeking the restoration of the monarchy — and Pahlavi, who was a teenager getting flight training in Texas during the Islamic revolution, was shrewd enough not to propose it. “This is not about restitution of an institution,” he said. But should a democratic Iran “choose to have me play a more prominent role,” he added, “let that be their choice.” “

http://www.rezapahlavi.org/art…..038;id=367

bb, throw out some support for saying that ” He also lied about Iran having a nuclear weapons program.” if you would.

You and Obama should throw out the evidence that they do.
*************
Dec /07.
“A new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold, contradicting an assessment two years ago that Tehran was working inexorably toward building a bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to be explosive in the middle of tense international negotiations aimed at getting Iran to halt its nuclear energy program, and in the middle of a presidential campaign during which a possible military strike against Iran’s nuclear program has been discussed. “

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12……html?_r=1

bb, I wasn’t asking about the weapons program, I was hoping that you could give some details or links to Obama’s speech.

Terri Gross has repeated these unsubstantiated claims about what the Iranian President has said about Israel and the holocaust many times. I have also heard Daniel Schorr, Ledeen, Feith, Cheney, Reuel Marc Gerecht, John Bolton, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews and many others repeat these debunked statements. These unsubstantiated claims and misinterpreted statements about Israel help create the environment (false reasons) for more aggressive actions towards Iran.

The Israeli lobby and others will be turning up the heat on Iran this fall. Pushing for more sanctions, leading up to a possible pre-emptive attack by Israel on Iran, possibly leading the U.S. into backing up Israel’s fool hardy actions.

Watch and listen for these unsubstantiated claims being repeated. Keep track, contact the radio or T.V. station and challenge them for repeating these. Write letters to your local paper if you read any of these misinterpretations or lies.

If asking about your misinterpretations is fruitless why do you expect tv or radio stations to be different?