News Science Quarterly (NS)

News Science Quarterly (NS)

The Position of the Iranian Press During World War II

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 Corresponding author, Associate Professor, Department of History, Payame Noor University (PNU), Tehran, Iran. E-mail: ar.sofi@Pnu.ac.ir
2 Assistant Professor, Department of History, Sayyed Jamaleddin Asadabadi University, Asadabad, Iran. E-mail: h.sharafisafa @sjau.ac.ir
Abstract
Objective: After the constitutional revolution, which brought about the first wave of the emergence of the press in Iran's political space, a second wave of growth and expansion of the press and various parties occurred after the fall of the autocratic government of Reza Shah and the opening of the political space. In the first wave after the constitutional revolution, various national and local newspapers and the press appeared in the political and cultural arena of Iran, so that the two newspapers "Majlis" and "Iran No" in the second Majlis each represented one of the two political parties and currents. During the Second World War, despite the political freedoms, the same approach of an unbridled and tyrannical press continued, and despite relative press freedom, no progress was made in the area of press professionalization. The basic question of this study is therefore: In which direction were the headlines and the nature of the press driven by the open and contradictory political atmosphere of the time and the numerous centers of power?
Methods: The method used in this study is the historical method, in which data is collected by extracting the sources and then analysing them. The method used here is therefore a descriptive research method.
Results: The results of the investigation indicate that the press's situation was not stable under the conditions of the time and that, even in the event of closure, the editors of the publications took advantage of the free space and the new political conditions and continued their activities, scoring points with other titles but with the same aims and approaches as before.
Conclusions: The results of this research show that whenever the National Assembly gained power as a symbol of libertarianism, the press was also strengthened as the fourth pillar of democracy, so that during the Second World War and the opening of the political space, this happened especially in the 14th Parliament. It led to the growth and expansion of the press. However, the diminution of the role of the parliament and the interference of internal powers and foreign forces in the elections of this important institution had an effect on the writing of the press.
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