CNN has been accused of mistranslating an interview between the station's host Christiane Amanpour and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in order to make Rouhani seem more moderate than he actually is or is willing to be.
The interview was aired on Wednesday and headlines on CNN’s website included “Iran’s new president: Yes, the Holocaust happened,” and “Why Rouhani may be different.”
But according to the state-run Iranian media, CNN put words in the mouth of the Iranian President to make it sound like he actually believes the Holocaust took place.
CNN's voiceover of the interview quoted Rouhani condemning the "Holocaust" and declaring that "whatever criminality they (the Nazis) committed against the Jews, we condemn." According to the CNN translation, Rouhani responded to Amanpour’s question of whether the Holocaust took place with: “I am not a historian, and that when it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust it is the historians that should reflect on it. But in general I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis committed toward the Jews, as well as non-Jewish people, was reprehensible and condemnable as far as we are concerned.”
The remarks were widely reported, specifically cited, and broadly hailed - including by Amanpour herself - as a signal of Iranian moderation.
Iran’s state-controlled Fars News agency, which has ties to the country’s Revolutionary Guards, denied that Rouhani ever referred to the Holocaust by name, and accused CNN of “fabricating the remarks” and making his statements appear more moderate in the interview. The agency denied that the Iranian president used the term “Holocaust,” instead referring to it as “historical events.” He also did not use the term “reprehensible.”
“CNN officials seem to be escaping their responsibility of informing the public honestly,” Fars News wrote on their English site. “During the interview, the CNN aired an English translation of President Rouhani's remarks which was totally inaccurate and untrustworthy, and in some parts contained sentences which were not at all uttered by the president.”
Fars News agency said CNN and Amanpour should “account for the fabrication” and for “untrustworthy and misleading coverage,” particularly “considering that Amanpour [was] raised in Iran and knows the Persian language very well,” she should have listened to the actual interview instead of “blaming the Iran-chosen translator.”
Amanpour dismissed the charges as "piffle," a clarification that did not go far in mollifying critics and CNN said the translator who worked on the interview was supplied by the Iranian government.
The network denied any mistranslations of the interview and then followed up by posting the entirety of the hour-long interview on its website.
The Wall Street Journal independently verified the translation and concluded that the "words attributed to Mr. Rouhani are not what he said" and that CNN "made Mr. Rouhani seem so much more conciliatory than he was."
The Daily Beast went further, noting that repeated caveats inserted by Rouhani questioning the scope of Nazi crimes against Jews - "the old Holocaust deniers tricks of 'questioning' the death toll, averring that many others groups were also victims, and claiming that a well-established historical fact requires further examination" - disqualify others from tenably characterizing him as having condemned the Holocaust.
After the CNN released the interview, hundreds of news agencies, TV and news channels, websites and weblogs around the world broadcast this title: "Iran's President Rouhani Calls Holocaust 'Reprehensible' Crime Against Jews", a title quoted from the CNN; Or "Rouhani Recognizes the Holocaust as Crime against Jews".
Here is, according to the Fars News website, the exact English translation of President Rouhani's remarks to CNN's question:
CNN Question: "One of the things your predecessor (President Ahmadinejad) used to do from this very platform was deny(ing) the Holocaust and pretend(ing) it was a myth, I want to know you, your position on the Holocaust, do you accept what it was, and what was it?"
Rouhani: "I have said before that I am not a historian and historians should specify, state and explain the aspects of historical events, but generally we fully condemn any kind of crime committed against humanity throughout the history, including the crime committed by the Nazis both against the Jews and non-Jews, the same way that if today any crime is committed against any nation or any religion or any people or any belief, we condemn that crime and genocide. Therefore, what the Nazis did is condemned, (but) the aspects that you talk about, clarification of these aspects is a duty of the historians and researchers, I am not a history scholar."