ows tamely the party line of the "Establishment" as exemplified by a few powerful corporations, or panders to the public, telling pthem only what they want to hear, then its effectiveness as an early warning device for the people will be largely eliminated (Bagdikian, 1990).
Of all the instances in which the modern American press has failed to fully inform the American people, perhaps none stands out more than the case of Iran. From the early 1970s up to the present day, America's troubled relations with Iran have been at the center of events which have dismayed, frightened, and confused the American people, and which have led to a long series of setbacks, embarrassments, and misfortunes for American policies. Events in Iran were central to the oil crises of the 1970s, which contributed greatly to inflation and slow economic growth in the U.S. The Iranian revolutionaries' seizure of the American embassy in Tehran from 1979 81 was a humiliation for the American public, and a major factor in the defeat of President Jimmy Carter's re election bid in 1980. The "Iran Contra" crisis in 1986 gravely weakened the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. U.S. hostility towards revolutionary Iran led it to arm and support Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the middle and late 1980s, and thus contributed to bringing on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Persian Gulf War.
In short, America has paid an immense price, materially and psychologically, for the inability of its people or their leaders to comprehend, much less anticipate, developments in Iran. In part, this failure is due to the actions of successive American Administrations, which made U.S. policy in Iran hostage to the fate of the Shah, and which came increasingly to subject themselves to the Shah's own illusions about his status and prospects (Sick, 1983). Once U.S. policy makers had committed themselves to the Shah, their intelligence advisors became reluctant to tell them anythi...