Fars News Agency
Fars News Agency logo
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| Abbreviation | FNA |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2003 |
| Type | News agency |
| Location | |
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Official language
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Persian, English, Arabic, Turkish |
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Managing Director
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Seyed Nezamozddin Musavi |
| Morteza Ghamari Vafa | |
| Website | • farsnews • english • fna |
The Fars News Agency (FNA) is a news agency in Iran. While it describes itself as "Iran's leading independent news agency", it is widely described by news media to be a "semi-official" news agency of the Government of Iran.
Fars News Agency was founded in 2003. In addition to Persian reporting, the agency also provides news in English,Turkish and Arabic.
In June 2012, Fars released an interview with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in which Morsi is said to have told Fars that he wanted to restore ties with Iran and wanted to "review" the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. Morsi later disputed the authenticity of the interview. Fars responded by providing what it said was audio of the interview. Arabic newscaster Al Arabiya quoted unnamed experts who said it was not Morsi's voice.
In September 2012, the agency picked up a story from The Onion, a satirical newspaper, about a supposed survey showing "an overwhelming majority of rural white Americans would rather vote for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than U.S. President Barack Obama in the upcoming U.S. elections". The Iranian version copied the original word-for-word, even including a made-up quote from a fictional West Virginia resident who says he would rather go to a baseball game with Ahmadinejad because "he takes national defense seriously, and he'd never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does."
Fars News Agency later apologized for its mistake, but claimed that a majority of Americans would prefer anyone outside of the American political system to President Obama and American statesmen.
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Wikipedia