Iranian Students' News Agency
Encyclopedia
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian university students. Established on November 4, 1999 in order to report on news from Iranian universities it now covers a variety of national and international topics. Editors and correspondents are themselves students in a variety of subjects, many of them are volunteers (nearly 1000). The ISNA is considered by Western media to be one of the most independent and moderate media organizations in Iran, and is often quoted.
Although it is generally considered independent, the ISNA is financially supported in part by the Iranian government and is supported by the officially sanctioned University Jihad, another student organization. The agency's main founder and first director Abolfazl Fateh, who resigned in late 2005, was taken to court on several occasions, including for a report on Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, a former judge and human rights activist and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. On 10 October 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially women's,...
, a Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
winner and human rights activist.
In January 2005 a server called The Planet unilaterally stopped hosting the website of the ISNA. The ISNA said that they did not receive a reason for the closure, and had only been informed 48 hours before the move. An Iranian government official later accused the United States of ordering the shutdown. The incident led to new calls for Iran to develop its own satellite communication technology.