The Day They Buried the Ayatollah

Abstract

Note by Iranian Studies: Journalism has the potential to make a reporter feel at least as important as the subject of his or her reports. The temptation can be even stronger in global journalism, with reporters from the affluent nations covering the traumas of the people in more problem-ridden parts of the world. By contrast, in Tom Fenton's account of Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral in 1989, a seasoned reporter goes beyond the apparently chaotic and frenzied action by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iranians to see the historic significance of the event and the man.

Thomas Trail Fenton, born 1930 in Baltimore, Maryland, retired from CBS in 2004 after a thirty-four year career. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1952 and was an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1952 to 1961, serving in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Fenton began his career in journalism at The Baltimore Sun, where he worked until 1970, reporting from Europe and the Middle East, including the June 1967 Israeli-Arab war and the May 1968 student protests in France, which earned Fenton an award from the Overseas Press Club.

Fenton joined CBS News as a correspondent in the Rome Bureau in 1970, followed by assignments to the bureaus in Tel Aviv, Paris, London and Moscow. He became Senior European Correspondent in 1979. He reported on the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971, the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. After the fall of Mohammad Reza Shah in 1979, Fenton was the first western journalist to interview Ayatollah Khomeini. He later returned to Iran to report on the hostage crisis that had followed the occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran. During the 1990s, Fenton covered the break up of the Soviet Union, the wars in the Balkans, and the violence in the Middle East and Africa. After retiring, Fenton wrote Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All in 2005.