ABSTRACT
Iran’s history has been characterized by repeated political convulsions that have led to the creation of a ‘short-term society’, without the opportunity to accumulate sufficient material and moral wealth for the well-being of all its citizens.1 As far as journalism is concerned, the past quarter century could, at first sight, be seen as a continuation of the same pattern, with two periods of rapid growth, a very short one in 1979 and a longer one nearly two decades later (1997-2000), each described as a ‘Spring of Freedom’, each followed by the closure of dozens of newspapers by the State. The first closures led to the exclusion from the profession of many journalists who had learned their skills before the 1979 Revolution. The closures that followed the second ‘Spring of Freedom’ affected dozens of newcomers to the profession, as well as a smaller number of surviving veterans.
