GroundTruth

At GlobalPost, the most celebrated work our journalists do is ground truth.

Being there on the ground for the story is what matters. And Iason Athanasiadis, a freelance writer and contributor to GlobalPost who was detained while working in Iran last month, always seeks ground truth. He lives it as a writer and photographer.

Iason has always done extraordinary work around the world for publications including the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor and others. But his greatest work and his greatest passion has been in Iran. His photo essay, “Children of the Revolution,” was one of the most enlightening pieces of journalism I have seen come out of Iran in many years. It chronicles the lives of Iranians with dignity and respect. It is void of cliches. It celebrates the complexity of its culture and it honors the yearnings of its people, particularly its youth, in their search for freedom.

And so I am thinking of Iason today, on America’s “Independence Day,” when big cities and little towns gather for cookouts and parades and forget that July 4th is really about some pretty heavy ideas like “revolution” and “freedom.”

Iason was in Iran reporting on these ideas — “revolution” and “freedom” — for GlobalPost when he was detained by Iranian officials at Tehran International Airport on June 17. Amid a crackdown on press freedoms in the wake of the contested presidential elections and the massive demonstrations that followed, Iason was preparing to leave the country as requested by the government of all Western journalists.

Iason's "Reflections on Leaving Iran"

Iason is a Greek citizen and was traveling with valid journalist credentials and a visa. In the three weeks since his detention, GlobalPost has been working diligently for his release with the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, which provided a grant for him to report from there, and The Washington Times, for which he was also contributing stories, as well as a wide circle of family, friends and colleagues. In an abundance of caution, we kept Iason’s detention quiet at first. (In the post below celebrating the escape of New York Times correspondent David Rohde from his Taliban captors in Afghanistan, you can see a veiled reference to Iason.) At the request of his family, we at first released only a sparse statement on his detention and a plea for his release. We are not trying to make a global drama out of it, just quietly working to encourage the Iranian government to do the right and legal thing. Greek government and Greek Orthodox Church officials have directly intervened with the Iranian government on Iason’s behalf and are also calling for his release. No formal charges against Iason have been presented to date.

Iason is more than a respected colleague. He is a friend. I met him in his native Greece just before the 2004 summer Olympics. I had taken my oldest son, Will, who was then 8, along for the reporting trip and Iason was very warm to him and took some photographs of Will walking through the Parthenon. I met Iason again when he came to Harvard University for the Nieman Fellowship in the Class of 2008 and he remembered my son’s name. That’s a small thing, for sure, but it says a lot about the kind of person he is, one who listens and cares about people. For many months after his Nieman year, he and I looked forward to finding a way for him to contribute to GlobalPost from Iran and finally in June we had the chance to do that. His work for us was fair and balanced and enlightening and, as always, based on “ground truth.”

So on this day with so much talk about freedom, we are left holding our breath that Iason will soon have his.