The Emerging Phenomenon of Elections
The emerging phenomenon of elections, just hours before the 4-hour debates of the 6 presidential candidates, remains the undisputed star of the electoral roundtables on state TV, Hossein Entezami, whom some jokingly say they will vote for.
Entezami, however, participates in the cultural roundtables as an expert, posing questions to the four candidates identified as conservatives so far, leading them to contradictions or statements differing from their previous ones. This has set the expectation that he will treat the remaining two candidates similarly, so as not to be accused of supporting a specific candidate.
Although one might guess which candidate he will vote for, as he is a media person and critic of information restrictions and protection plans, his criterion is naturally media freedom. However, he has not let this bias interfere, instead teaching the hosts how to ask precise questions.
The hosts, whose role has been reduced to timekeeping.
Why it is possible to ask a question that becomes a subject of sarcasm and humor about Saeed Jalili, the brother of Vahid Jalili, the number two man at state TV, is unbelievable to many, but Entezami has done it. Some see the issue as beyond the fact that he has been the director of the state TV newspaper and essentially its founder, Jam-e Jam.
Critics have accused him of wanting to avenge Ali Larijani’s disqualification, due to his closeness to him. However, they have not denied this, and besides, he has only posed specialized questions, demonstrating what media work is, which has nothing to do with Mr. Larijani.
Hossein Entezami has been elected seven consecutive times as the representative of the press managers on the Press Supervisory Board, with his strongest support base being the so-called mainstream and social media, and it is not an exaggeration to say that he has his finger on the pulse of society.
Although he started with public and large media, he is not unfamiliar with the private sector, having managed a media group in the private sector, including the newspaper Khabar. Even though his starting point was a right-wing newspaper, he eventually reached the moderate faction and became the Deputy Minister of Press and later the Head of the Cinema Organization during Rouhani’s administration.
His mastery and continuity in media work over more than 30 years have led many to think he is a professor of communication sciences, and the title ‘Doctor’ at the beginning of his name is for this reason. However, like Abbas Abdi and Sadegh Zibakalam, his bachelor’s degree is in chemical engineering, which he continued later, but his doctorate is unrelated to chemistry or communication sciences, rather in strategic management. Nonetheless, he has worked in the media field, particularly in media management, for over three decades, and is an expert with ideas and experience.
Most people who have studied technical and engineering fields at undergraduate and master’s levels and later obtained their doctorates in other fields have an organized and orderly mind. If it seems that Entezami’s logic is stronger than that of the pretentious and sometimes incoherent guests, it might be because of this.
Sooner than expected, the roundtables became a talking point because, typically, something significant should happen in debates, and that too from the candidates’ mouths, not the typically conservative expert. However, in recent days, it has been Hossein Entezami who has shone, posing simple questions to the four conservative candidates, who have been unable to give straightforward answers, even if, like Zakani, they claim with their unique tone to love such questions.
In the first roundtable, he asked Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf for his opinion on filtering, reminding him that as the Speaker of Parliament, he has been a member and often vice-chairman of several high councils, and suddenly asked him to explain whether he was the complainant in the imprisonment of two of his critics, without intending to undermine him. Interestingly, Mr. Qalibaf tried to use it as an opportunity.
Whether the audience accepted it or not, and to what extent the claims of those who published his complaints are true, is another discussion, but it attracted enough attention that we forget what the other two experts ask.
The main question, however, was when he asked if you said you would keep some from the current government, does that include the current Minister of Culture or not, and he did not give a precise answer. In the second roundtable, he asked Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi if he intends to withdraw after the debates and is a so-called cover candidate, not to ask serious questions, with this technique forcing him to say he would stay.
He did not directly and specifically ask if he would stay or not, but conditionally raised another issue.
In the third roundtable, however, he excelled, and the topic was hijab, where Saeed Jalili introduced a new term into the debates and even daily discourse: strategic depth. Jokes and videos were made, not that strategic depth is meaningless or laughable, but to avoid a direct answer, he beat around the bush and descended from the summit to reach strategic depth. Entezami had previously criticized the pairing of hijab and chastity in an interview, saying hijab pertains to appearance and chastity to the inner self, and with this background, it was clear he was not asking without reason.
In the fourth roundtable, the question was about the hijab guards from the current mayor of Tehran, asking if it was under his orders or not, and Zakani had to say only the positives are related to him, and more clearly, he did not take responsibility for the metro hijab guards.
Mr. Zakani quickly realized that this positive aspect was no less than that strategic depth, so he disavowed the hijab guards at some stations, and what more could Hossein Entezami have wanted?
What has angered the government officials, however, is the point mentioned above, that he asked Qalibaf if he would retain the current Minister of Culture if he became president. The question did not seem sensitive, but it did not sit well with the Ministry of Culture, and apparently, they have also filed a complaint against him.
The same Ministry of Culture where Entezami once held two important media and cinema deputy positions, showing that there is indeed a significant difference between governments.
So far, and even before the debates began, Hossein Entezami has become so prominent that some have thought he is a candidate himself or wished he were, which shows what the secret of state TV’s decline is. Such questions should have been posed by the hosts, but the role of Mehdi Mahdiqoli in the front row or Ms. Neda Sepanlou in the economic roundtable or Jafar Khosravi in the cultural roundtable has been reduced to timekeeping, and the program’s direction has practically been in Mr. Entezami’s hands.
So far, there are two puzzles: first, why was Masoud Pezeshkian approved, and second, why does Hossein Entezami challenge the candidates as an expert? They say it’s to increase participation.
Well, if that is the goal, what’s wrong with high participation? Isn’t it good? In fact, evidence shows that the higher the participation, the better Pezeshkian’s chances, unless Mr. Entezami’s soap affects him too.