Independent journalism means something simple to me: “Independent from power”; this means independent from any political and economic power.

The journalist is not with the government, but against it. It is not their duty to praise the government, but to be critical, to observe the government, see its shortcomings, and report them to the people.

I have heard people say, “A party journalist can also be independent,” and I don’t understand how a journalist who is supposed to serve the interests of their party and whose newspaper is the party’s organ can be independent. Parties want to gain power, they are supposed to get votes from the people and win the power struggle by any means necessary. Will a party journalist criticize their own party in the party’s organ, weaken them in front of their rivals, and ultimately hand over power to someone else? Can they expose the party’s weaknesses, which they work for, to the people in order to reduce their votes? The answer to these questions is clearly negative. A party journalist must always support their party and justify their mistakes, not expose them. They must cover up their party’s shortcomings or mistakes in order to prevent a decline in their votes.

Tomorrow, when the partisan journalist, his party comes to power, how can he criticize the desired performance of his party’s government with criteria of public interest? Or does party interests always take priority? The answer is clear: “Party interests, not public interests.”

I do not intend to criticize partisan journalism. It is a type of media work that exists all over the world, but journalism in the service of a party and political power. These types of journalists have the right to work, but they should openly declare that we are not independent journalists. We are journalists who work for the interests of our party. I consider misleading people in this field to be a mistake. Being a partisan journalist and hiding it goes against ethics and the interests of the people. People should know whose works they are reading? Those who are independent and critical of power? Or those who defend political power or seek to bring a specific party or faction to power.

Journalists who cherish the idea of independence, sometimes face complex issues in the world of journalism in Iran. Without flattery, these journalists find it difficult and rare to find a newspaper or independent publication with professional standards to work in. As a dear friend once said, we should strive to find a semi-independent newspaper, not a fully independent one.

Journalists who try to be independent have no choice but to work in these somewhat independent newspapers. These types of journalists have found their own ways over the years to produce independent reports in these newspapers, sometimes successfully and sometimes their efforts have been blocked and semi-independent or party-affiliated editors remove their articles from the newspaper or censor them. These independent journalists sometimes agree to publish their censored articles, perhaps because they have no other choice; they cannot find a truly independent newspaper that will publish their articles without censorship and they tell themselves, “something is better than nothing.”

These independent and professional journalists, sometimes the newspaper becomes a battlefield for them, a full-fledged war with editors who do not allow their critical and revealing articles to be published. They sometimes emerge victorious in this fight, but often remain unsuccessful, and this constant struggle either leads to the journalist’s expulsion or their resignation.

But still, there are journalists who remain hopeful of staying independent in the field of media, saying that no matter what, even in a small column of a newspaper, the light of independent journalism must be kept on… They work calmly and without fuss, and they are excited to be able to bypass the censorship of power-affiliated editors, and they are happy that the course of independent journalism still occasionally sheds light on a corner of a semi-independent or non-independent newspaper in the Iranian media.