the Marines correspondent: Dexter Filkins

This guy served in the US marines and it shows in all of his Middle East reporting.  Think about it: he never studied the Middle East, I am told, and does not know one word of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, or Hebrew but has become a Middle East correspondent for the Times only because of his military service.  Look at this lousy piece: it is based on two unproven premises: 1) that the channel Farsi1 has become "one of the most popular channel" in Iran.  He does not provide us a proof.  When it comes to countries that the US does not approve, reporting is not needed: only anecdotes that can reinforce the impulses of the US government.  2) he claims that the hacking of the site of the station is such an important foreign policy development and indicates a high level frustration with the station.  Tell Filkins this: such hacking of pro-Saudi and pro-US news sites is very common in the Middle East, and sometimes that hacking is in the other direction.  In fact, Filkins should know that the New York Times covers Iran from Toronto.  Maybe he needs to visit Toronto.