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Christiane Amanpour Dumbfounded We’d Believe Iran State Media Over CNN

By Dusten Carlson
Published on: 11:59 PST, Sep 26, 2013

Christiane Amanpour is just galled by the willingness of some to believe the Fars News Agency (accused of being the Ayatollah’s mouthpiece) over CNN.

You’ll recall that Amanpour sat down for an interview with Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani, during which she asked him about the Holocaust. Iranian leaders have kind of a reputation for not caring about the plight of Jews throughout history, and Rouhani’s own predecessor denied the Holocaust even happened.

So when Rouhani told Amanpour that he roundly condemns any violence, past, present or future, against Jews, Christians, Muslims and all others, the mainstream media lauded him for his commitment to peace and shared high hopes that perhaps Iran would start being part of the solution (instead of part of the problem).

There’s just one problem… Rouhani never said any of that, according to Fars and the Wall Street Journal.

Instead, CNN completely fabricated Rouhani’s quotes. Fars was the first to condemn the network and offer their own translation, which is less conciliatory to Jews and the Holocaust.

WSJ agreed, saying that their translation of Rouhani’s remarks lend “points for honesty” to “the journalists at Fars, who for reasons that probably range from solidarity to self-preservation aren’t disposed to whitewash their President’s ideological predilections.”

“So what did Mr. Rouhani really say?” they wrote.

“After offering a vague indictment of ‘the crime committed by the Nazis both against the Jews and the non-Jews,’ he insisted that ‘I am not a history scholar,’ and that ‘the aspects that you talk about, clarification of these aspects is a duty of the historians and researchers.'”

The Daily Beast’s Michael Moynihan also said that CNN’s translator, supposedly hired by the Iranian government, fudged the translation.

In the face of what could end up being quite the scandal for CNN, Amanpour took to Twitter Thursday afternoon to defend both herself and her network:

Of course, to anyone who wants the full, possibly-altered transcript from CNN:

What do you think? Did CNN fabricate Hassan Rouhani’s quotes?

[Image: Shutterstock]

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