In the labyrinthine, often dimly lit corridors of Iran’s newsrooms, a sound resonates louder than the headlines of the daily press: the heavy, suffocating sound of silence, a silence not born of a scarcity of subjects or a lack of events; the country is a land of unfinished crises, accumulated tragedies, and naked social contradictions.
Rather, this silence is the product of a complex, multilayered, and deeply institutionalized process wherein the journalist, before even pressing a finger to the keyboard, convenes a summary court in his or her own mind—acting simultaneously as the accused, the defense, and the judge—and ultimately issues a verdict of condemnation by deleting their own words.
We are witnessing a phenomenon that can be termed the “Syndrome of Trembling Pens,” a condition in which writers cease to be narrators of reality and transform into their own ruthless, vigilant censor, with the government using a combination of strict laws, arrests, physical intimidation, and extensive internet filtering to control the flow of information
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