Critics are ripping into the New York Times for its death notice of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, giving him a headline seemingly more suitable for a statesman than a tyrant and terrorist.
The liberal outlet published an article Saturday following President Donald Trump’s revelation that Khamenei, whom he called “one of the most evil people in history,” had been killed.
While many Persians around the world celebrated the theocratic dictator’s death, according to the Daily Mail, the Times took a “soft touch” approach with its coverage, headlined “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Power, Is Dead at 86.”
The headline was accompanied by a photo of Khamenei strolling thoughtfully in his clerical robes near an impressive column wrapped in the red-and-white, Shia-themed national emblem of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Social media blasted the newspaper for failing to call the cleric a terrorist in the headline or first paragraph, where the paper wrote the cleric was known for “brutally crushing dissent at home, and maintaining unswerving hostility to the United States and Israel.”
The popular Libs of TikTok on X posted the story and compared it to the death announcement of the January 13 death of “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams, when the Times wrote that his comic strip “was a sensation until he made a racist comments on his podcast.”
“A cartoonist was the true threat to peace, obviously,” a user sarcastically wrote.
“NYT called Scott racist but failed to call out terrorist,” another shared.
“They are sick,” one person responded.
“Evil,” wrote another.
“Insanely I did check if this was a real headline or just AI,” another wrote. “You just don’t know these days.”
“I did the same thing. I could not believe how that was framed,” wrote another. “Can’t hate media enough.”
Khamenei’s 36-year rule nourished a theocracy that empowered a radical Islamic governance in Iran, generated extremism across the Middle East, and funded proxy terrorist groups, U.S. leaders and intelligence services have said for years.
Most recently, thousands of demonstrators protesting against Khamenei’s regime were executed in the streets and during roundups.
Times reporters wrote in their piece:
As the second leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khamenei cemented and expanded its hard-line Islamist and anti-Western policies, shaping the nation’s Islamic revolution far more than its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who held power for just a decade, most of it during a devastating war with Iraq.
At home, Ayatollah Khamenei ruled with an iron fist, blocking attempts at moderate reforms, labeling public demands for change as Western-orchestrated “sedition” and squelching dissent with arrests and executions. He vastly expanded a loyal military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, whose intelligence wing served as a powerful tool of repression.
The Daily Mail approached the Times for a comment on the social media pushback. The newspaper pointed out that the story on the former leader was an “obituary.”
“The Times’s obituaries report and reflect lives in full, illuminating why, in our judgment, they were significant,” the newspaper told the Mail.
It then chastised the British tabloid, adding, “We fairly and accurately include the newsworthy details of each life and death, and don’t treat them dishonestly to score points like you’re trying to do here.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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