CSM:

If you edited a “reformist” newspaper in Iran in the late 1990s, you bolted wire mesh screens to your windows to deflect grenade attacks and ringed your office with a wrought-iron fence with sharpened tines.  

Back then, reform-leaning journalists were the frontline of a political and cultural war in Iran. As title after title was shut down, newsrooms were regularly assaulted by hard-line vigilantes. 

The clash continues in the new era of centristPresident Hassan Rouhani, but its character has changed. The reformist Shargh newspaper has no sign marking its offices, but it also has no anti-grenade screens.

“At that time there were plainclothes pressure groups, hardliners were prevalent, and reformists were radicals,” says Davood Mohammadi, the chief editor of Shargh. “Now both sides have changed. Now hardliners accept critics and do not attack newspapers in the same way…they calculated the cost of those actions.”

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