{"id":266,"date":"2026-06-24T20:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T20:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=266"},"modified":"2026-06-24T20:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T20:40:12","slug":"the-media-keep-making-this-mistake-about-the-iran-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=266","title":{"rendered":"The Media Keep Making This Mistake About the Iran Talks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It\u2019s baffling how so many American news outlets have recited President Trump\u2019s claims that his envoys are making \u201cprogress\u201d at the talks with Iran, when in fact it turns out, time after time, that no such progress has been made.<\/p>\n

Read more The Conservative Majority Blew Apart One of the Biggest Myths About This Supreme Court<\/a><\/p>\n

The pattern underscores one of the most prominent, if undersung, media \u201cbiases\u201d\u2014the bias in favor of pushing a story forward. Few readers would even skim a story beneath the headline \u201cNothing New at Arms Talks Today.\u201d And so when Donald Trump or Vice President J.D. Vance, who is heading up the talks, announces progress, news editors perk up.<\/p>\n

A case could be made, of course, that words spoken by the president or vice president are inherently newsworthy, especially if they cover a big-news topic. But that doesn\u2019t mean that reporters, editors, or headline scribes have to put those words up top, especially if they\u2019re not true.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, this New York Timeslede on June 22: \u201cVice President JD Vance cast the first day of high-level negotiations with Iran as productive on Monday, saying the two sides had laid a \u2018good foundation.\u2019 \u2026 Vance claimed the talks had yielded consensus on at least one issue\u2014international access to Iranian nuclear sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not until the fourth paragraph did the Times note: \u201cHowever, a spokesman for Iran\u2019s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, told the official Iranian state news agency IRNA that Iran had made \u2018no new commitments\u2019 for inspections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which rather diminishes the headline, the lede, and the whole rationale for putting the story on the front page.<\/p>\n

Still, the next day, June 23, CBS News\u2019 website plowed the same dead-end road with this headline: \u201cVance Says Iran to Let International Nuclear Inspections Resume After \u2018Good Day\u2019 of Talks.\u201d The lede basically repeated the headline. But then it added, \u201cIran\u2019s foreign minister, however, said earlier that real negotiations on the \u2018nuclear issue\u2019 hadn\u2019t started yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

This caveat is consistent with what all sides in the talks have acknowledged\u2014that discussions on Iran\u2019s nuclear program haven\u2019t begun. Even the memorandum of understanding, which Trump and others signed last week, includes no provisions on nuclear issues, except that they will be a topic in the negotiations that take place in the next 60 days or longer (if they end up taking place at all).<\/p>\n

Read more War Games<\/a><\/p>\n

So why does CBS make a headline and a lede of a statement that is clearly untrue? (At least the editors tucked the truth of the matter at the end of the first paragraph, rather than burying it mid-story.)<\/p>\n

I should note that there are exceptions to this syndrome, notably a story in Wednesday\u2019s New York Times by David Sanger and Yeganeh Torbati (both veteran national-security reporters), headlined, \u201cTrump Is Making Big Claims About Iran Talks. Iran Keeps Contradicting Him.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the majority of stories follow the standard mistaken beat\u2014headlines and ledes extolling \u201cvery good progress,\u201d \u201cencouraging progress,\u201d agreement on \u201ca road map to a final deal,\u201d\u00a0then, a few paragraphs down, dramatic qualifiers, in some cases contradictions, as revealed either in Iranian denials or plain statements of fact.<\/p>\n

The fact is that the U.S. and Iran are still far apart on the main issues\u2014not just inspections of Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, but whether Iran can enrich uranium, who controls the Strait of Hormuz in 60 days, the release of Iran\u2019s frozen assets, the enforcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Without resolution of all<\/em> those issues, there is no agreement.<\/p>\n

Many years ago, when I was a newbie newspaper reporter in the Boston Globe\u2019s Washington bureau, one of my colleagues, Tom Oliphant, gave me a tip that I\u2019ve cherished ever since. \u201cLet\u2019s say you go to a White House press conference,\u201d Tom imagined. \u201cThe president\u2019s spokesman says, \u2018The sky is green.\u2019 You walk outside, look up, and see that the sky is blue. What\u2019s your lede?\u201d<\/p>\n

The typical news story from the White House press corps (which was more docile than today\u2019s) would have led with the White House spokesman saying the sky was green, then, two or three paragraphs down, a quote from some meteorologist noting that the sky appeared on certain sensors to be blue.<\/p>\n

A better lede, Tom was instructing me, would have read something like this: \u201cThe White House claimed today that the sky was green, even though in fact it was clearly blue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Patient Zero?<\/a><\/p>\n

Those covering the Iran talks should learn the same lesson.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pattern underscores one of the most prominent, if undersung, media \u201cbiases.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[10,39,161,169,59],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war-stories","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-j-d-vance","tag-journalism","tag-media"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Media Keep Making This Mistake About the Iran Talks - Home Move Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=266\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Media Keep Making This Mistake About the Iran Talks - Home Move Chronicle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The pattern underscores one of the most prominent, if undersung, media \u201cbiases."\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=266\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Home Move Chronicle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-24T20:40:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/homemovechronicle.com\\\/?p=266#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/homemovechronicle.com\\\/?p=266\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/homemovechronicle.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/75d86f25dbb870f24983ccc831d1ec4e\"},\"headline\":\"The Media Keep Making This Mistake About the Iran Talks\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-24T20:40:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/homemovechronicle.com\\\/?p=266\"},\"wordCount\":782,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/homemovechronicle.com\\\/?p=266#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/homemovechronicle.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/d2196feeef0bf57d6511c650ec94cb0b.avif\",\"keywords\":[\"Donald Trump\",\"Iran\",\"J.D. 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