Neda is Mythology, Not Fact

This week I chided Andrew Sullivan [1] for posting an e-mail supposedly confirming the details of Neda’s death. Andrew Sullivan defends himself [2], saying the details in the e-mail are confirmed in this Los Angeles Times story [3]. Since then, I’ve gotten dozens of e-mails from Sullivan fans asking me to apologize and run a correction. I politely decline. Neither the Los Angeles Times story, nor any of the news stories that ran yesterday confirm any details in that e-mail. Instead, they all just bolster my conviction that we are witnessing the creation of a myth, not the investigation of a murder.

The LA Times story confirms that she was shot, and there was a doctor on the scene. I could have told you that from the video. It doesn’t say anything about who killed her. Her singing instructor [3], who was with her that day, says he heard a shot and thinks it came from a rooftop. That is very different than what the doctor wrote in the e-mail, which is that a “basij” member “aimed straight at her heart.”

Myths get created even in real time; read the contemporaneous deathbed stories of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. Neda’s mother says she begged her daughter not go [3] to the protests, and her daughter answered, “Don't worry. It's just one bullet and its over.” Again, I don’t begrudge them this mythology. A mother needs something to make sense of her grief. The street protesters need a sympathetic face, and Neda is ideal. But let’s just report it for what it is.

Photograph of Iranian protesters by Louisa Gouliamaki//AFP/Getty Images.