Media all over the world are spreading the report, originally issued by CBS News, that up to 20,000 protesters have now been killed in Iran. CBS News reported that “two sources, including one inside Iran, told CBS News on Jan. 13 that at least 12,000, and possibly as many as 20,000 people have been killed.”
But figures given by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the diaspora organization based in the United States and financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is considered to be the main source for anti-regime information, are much lower: “In terms of human losses, the deaths of 2,403 protesters have been confirmed.”
The death of a single protester is a death too much, but at the end of the day, the media (in this case, CBS News) are inflating by an order of magnitude a figure whose source (HRANA) itself is dubious.
