Tavaana Interview Transcript

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Nikahang Kowsar Tavaana Interview Transcript Vision and Motivation I started drawing my first cartoons when I was a geology student. Back then, my professors were ideal models for my cartoons.

1 Nikahang Kowsar Tavaana Interview Transcript Vision and Motivation I started drawing my first cartoons when I was a geology student. Back then, my professors were ideal models for my cartoons. Little by little, I got access to Gol Agha, a cartoon and satiric Persian language magazine, and worked with this publication for a while. This cooperation did not last, and I went on to other journals. First the daily Hamshahri and then, after Khatami s election in 1997 and the opening of several journals, other publications as well ones that were banned just as soon as they entered the media scene. During a given period of time, I drew up to 3 different cartoons for as many different publications, thus setting a record I think. But my main motivation was to do what I could, and to find and build my own audience. At first my relationship with the public was like a monologue, but soon I established a dialogue with my audience. This dialogue with them became even more attractive to me once I came to Canada and was no longer limited to the print media, and got a foothold in online media as well. Then I went on studying journalism during a certain period of time while in Canada, and I learned new things which had been inaccessible to me back in Iran. You know, the media in Iran is an instrument of political propaganda for various groups, so it lacks moderation. But I learned that this could also be true for online media, and this is why I have been working quite differently over the past couple of years. Leadership I can t give you slogan-type responses about what the characteristics of a good or effective leader are. What I can say about a journalist is that they should have faith in

2 what they do, they should not deceive people, should not have double standards, and they should try to team up with like-minded people and explore practical ways of achieving something and working together towards the same objectives. We have seen over the past years that small-scale alliances have been formed among various small groups and organizations, but they haven t been long-lasting. Usually, we find more to divide us than unite us. I think we need to concentrate more on which points of agreement can lead to a coalition, and start focusing on those points. For instance, if I want to get something done in the media, I need to see who shares common goals with me in working with the media, being moderate, and not attacking anyone no! Of course, any critic can attack someone s viewpoints that s normal but critics shouldn t violate their impartiality and engage in biased political criticism in favor of powerful political and interest groups. Journalists and critics should enter the media field with the sole goal of impartial criticism and informing the public opinion. As a journalist, I think we should not be self-serving, but instead concentrate on doing good journalism that communicates the facts. A journalist should communicate reality; if you cling too much to what might be called the truth, it can be damaging to good journalism. When you re driven by what you believe is the truth, or what you ve been indoctrinated to believe is the truth, you may not be reflecting reality as it is, which I believe should be the primary focus of a journalist. By doing so, ultimately a journalist may even confuse their audience. As a journalist, what I ve been trying to do is to free my audience from this belief that a journalist s mission is to write whatever will please the public. It is not a journalist s mission to become an instrument of political amusement or public entertainment. A journalist is a person who has the obligation to tell the reality of things, and this is precisely what has not been institutionalized in Iranian media work. Civic Environment

3 In any case, a journalist, and a cartoonist for that matter, has a set of responsibilities, and nothing goes without responsibility. Freedom (of expression) doesn t mean that I can draw anything I want. I could well draw a cartoon of a clergyman having sex, but I refuse to do so based on certain moral and social principles. But, at the same time, I can also feel how free I am in doing what I do based on public opinion, professional practices, and social customs. In Iran, there was more sensitivity and nervousness about these matters. In Iran, you can t draw a cartoon of a military governor or a clergyman, or any of the powerful people media owners have special relationships with. Of course, these kinds of limitations are less frequent outside Iran, but still, working with a given media outlet whose chief editor has a certain sensitivity about particular subjects has limited me in my work and my constant search for increasing amounts of freedom. But, having said that, there is nothing like that that can t be overcome with time. Audience What I can say is that the majority of my audience is made up of the middle class. However, various groups of people from different social classes with internet access maintain communication with me via chat or comments. All in all, when it comes to my work online, what I can say is that my target audience consists of people over the age of 18, and in the range of 37 to 40 years old. Having said that, I should add that the internet audience is not well defined; it is actually quite relative as a population. A given cartoon could be attractive to the younger audience, while another one could be appealing to an older, say above 50 years of age, population. I cannot limit myself to any particular age group, but what I can say is that my target is the 18 to 40 year-old age group. Supporters and Opponents

4 I personally feel that my work appeals much more to audience members who aren t led by anyone or tied to a particular Guardian. Anyone whose intellectual leader or political Guardian is either Khameinei, Moussavi, or Karroubi, and therefore tries to see my works with their eyes, will run into difficulties with my cartoons at some point. I have always tried to offer independent-minded journalistic work. Although I have made far more cartoons of Ahmadinejad than Moussavi or Karroubi, in my eyes, there s no difference between them. A politician is a politician, looking for power; one has power and one doesn t, though he or she may have had power in the past. There is no difference. Those who don t like to see criticism of their preferred candidate quite obviously will dislike my work. On the other hand, those who are looking for criticism of various viewpoints will feel more comfortable with my work. At the end of the day, what I try to do with my cartoons is to force a growing audience to reflect and think on their own. My goal is not just to produce quantitatively more cartoons. If I could make a comparative point here, in Iran, Mr. Mohajerani said (from London) that he has no problem with the Guardianship of the theologian (the Supreme Leader) and that he could live with it. Mr. Khatami, in that same mood, said that the goal of the Green Movement is not to overthrow the regime. Now, if this same logic, prevailing now in Iran among the leaders of the Green Movement, had prevailed in Kyrgyzstan, with all the differences between the two countries, the same old regime would still be in place there. So, I made a comparative cartoon on these two situations and got a lot of comments on it. I ll give you another example. When Misters Gandji, Mohajerani, Bazargan, Kadivar and Soroush signed a petition, thus forming a small group, I compared that to a group of blind people holding each other s hands, and I got quite violent reactions. That small group eventually broke up, and I was accused of having facilitated the breakup of something that had never really existed as a strong coalition and had been weak from the very beginning. I ll give another example, not a cartoon this time. Some time ago, there was a televised debate on VOA, and there, Mr. Akbarayn claimed that the leaders of the Green Movement had already criticized the Supreme Leader without naming him. I argued

5 that, contrary to Mr. Akbarayn s claims, there has been so such thing, and most of those leaders have actually accepted the Guardianship of the Supreme Leader. Just a couple of days ago, Mr. Mohajerani discussed the principle of the Guardianship of the Supreme Leader, saying that he has fully accepted it. After that, two of those who had previously accused me of having broken up that small group ed me their regrets and apologized. That isn t what I d asked for. We are all engaged in a debate. A given work may appear offensive to someone now, but later may serve as a source of reflection to that same person. I also make mistakes, and often I have to create a work showing that I ve made an about-face in my own thinking. Outreach Activities I ll give you an example. Over the past few months, with the help of a group of journalist friends, we have started a website called Khodnevis, meaning Self-writing pen. Although there is no standard in Iranian media, our standard in Khodnevis was to allow anyone to log in and write their opinion, and then follow others sites references to posts on our site. By following the traffic of the posts made on Khodnevis, we found out that, for instance, a given work which had been clicked 14,000 times on our site had then found its way to Facebook or Twitter, and through these social sites onto various blogs. If I remember well, there was a particular post on our site that was reproduced by others up to 300 times. In the case I mentioned previously, if the post had been clicked 14,000 times on Khodnevis, it is quite possible that through other websites and re-postings, it reached hundreds of thousands of viewers. And this is something that couldn t have happened back in Iran with print media, for the simple reason that that kind of media has a limited circulation. This encourages me to do more work, to read more and to think more, because there is a real demand and sensibility out there for this kind of work, and it goes well beyond my limited personal capabilities at any given time.

6 Success It s difficult for me to give exact statistics on how successful I ve been in my work. It s difficult to say how successful a journalist, either professional or amateur, has been in working with others, in the pursuit of truth, and in showing that there is no censorship in reaching truth. If I have been accurate in presenting myself, I can say that I am an independent journalist. As a citizen-journalist, what I try to do is to help other citizen-journalists whose works cannot published elsewhere to come together in a space where they can publish their work. In that sense, I could say that I ve had some degree of success. If a website has a readership of 12,000 to 18,000 viewers, on an Iranian scale that could be regarded as a success, but in my opinion, it is not. When you have between 20 and 30 million Internet users, why should a website have below the 100 thousand mark viewers? Just take a look at various websites. For instance, take Radio Farda s website. Or take Rooz Online, or Rahesabz, or Iran Green Voice, and so on to those websites like Radio Zamaneh s whose readership has dropped significantly. This is a major blow. No one talks about it but, statistically speaking, it is a major blow to our media. These sites should have a readership of at least 100 to 200,000 viewers. But their failure to respect a certain impartiality and moderation has made many viewers go elsewhere, to the point that today, only a certain audience focuses on those sites. I could well say that, all in all, I have had some success, but in my own judgment, I don t think that I have been successful. I would say that I work for a minimum of 10 thousand viewers, and I have no idea what the maximum is. When a given work of mine hits the pages of Khodnevis, it has, say, 10,000 viewers. That same work on Roozonline.com will get up to 50 or 60,000 viewers. If it is posted on Balatarin, its readership could go up and down. Having said that, in my opinion, I have not been as successful as I would like to be.

Exclusive Tavaana Interview. with. Ramin Parham

Exclusive Tavaana Interview. with. Ramin Parham Exclusive Tavaana Interview with Ramin Parham E-Learning Institute for Iranian Civil Society http://www.tavaana.org A Project of http://www.eciviced.org Tavaana Exclusive Interview with Ramin Parham E-Collaborative