Speaking Truth to Power in Iran

"Just a moment," an Iranian friend typed as we chatted online, "while I upload my photos of today's protest onto Facebook." He is only one of many ordinary Iranians informing the world about the momentous events taking place in Iran since the country's disputed June 12 presidential election. As traditional media outlets and foreign journalists have faced mounting government restrictions on their reporting, "citizen journalists" have stepped in.

Through e-mails, blogs and social-networking Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, they have been disseminating photos, video and eyewitness accounts of street clashes and violence between anti-government demonstrators and Iranian security forces and militiamen.

But this kind of reporting is not without risk. The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders says bloggers have been arrested, as have people who simply took pictures with their cell phones. All journalists, the organization's secretary general says, are "under threat."

It is not the first time that the Islamic Republic has tried to limit the reporting of internal unrest in recent years.