Iran Suspends Reuters Journalists Over a Faulty Headline
After being wrongly maligned as “assassins” in a Reuters news report last month, female ninjas in Iran may have found the pen momentarily mightier than the sword. But as Reuters discovered after correcting the report, the heavy hand of government can be even stronger in Iran.
The news agency said Thursday that officials had suspended the press credentials of its entire staff in Iran over errors in a Feb. 16 video report on Iranian women trained in the ancient Japanese martial art of Ninjutsu.
The suspension, by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, followed a report by Iran’s semiofficial Press TV that some of the women were filing lawsuits over the report, originally titled “Thousands of female Ninjas train as Iran’s assassins.” The report itself did not make the same assertion as the headline, Stephen J. Adler, the editor in chief of Reuters News, said in an interview.
The faulty title was corrected 10 days later to read, “Three thousand women Ninjas train in Iran,” after senior members of Reuters were alerted after an inquiry from an Iranian television station. The video was also updated to put into context remarks by at least one of the women, who told a Reuters reporter she would use her martial arts skills to defend Iran from foreign attack.
“I didn’t see factual errors in the story,” Mr. Adler said. “The headline was really bad, and as soon as we learned about it, we changed it.” He said that the error had not been malicious.
The report comes at a time of heightened sensitivity in Iran about its image amid speculation over a possible military strike by Israel and stepped-up international pressure over its nuclear program. The women said that ninjas were nothing new in Iran, and that they were not being trained for the military.