Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died on February 28. Within hours, the New York Times published an obituary calling him "avuncular and magnanimous," with his "spectacles, Palestinian kaffiyeh, long robes and silver beard." The Washington Post led with his "bushy white beard and easy smile" and his fondness for Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. The Free Press responded with "The Posthumous Makeover of Ali Khamenei," arguing the coverage amounted to sanitizing "the architect of decades of terror at home and abroad." The debate is familiar—the same thing happened when Castro died in 2016 and when Soleimani was killed in 2020. But perhaps this time the gap between the coverage and the record is unusually wide.

1. The Obituaries Are Disgraceful (The Free Press, HonestReporting, media critics)

You don't describe a man like this as "avuncular."

The Free Press's Maya Sulkin called it a "posthumous makeover." Major Western outlets presented Khamenei as a statesman with interesting hobbies rather than the head of a regime that executed at least 972 people in 2024 alone—the highest total in nearly a decade. In 2023, at least 853 executions. In 1988, estimates were that more than 32,000 political prisoners were killed.

The mainstream press used "hardliner" as a euphemism for terrorism. All sorts of outlets called the Khamenei and his regime "hardliners." This obscures the reality of a theocratic state that jailed journalists, executed political prisoners, funded Hezbollah and Hamas, and ordered violent crackdowns on women for how they wore their hair. Even the WSJ only used the word "terrorist" in a 4,000-word obituary. This for a leader whose regime spent an estimated $16 billion annually funding Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and armed Shiite groups in Iraq—who called the Holocaust a "myth"—who said Israel was "a cancerous tumor" that "should be removed from the region."

The debate is a rerun. When Fidel Castro died in 2016, the Times ran a 7,900-word obituary that critics called overly gentle—describing him as "the fiery apostle of revolution" while downplaying the imprisonment, torture, and murders of his regime. When will the mainstream media learn to look at things objectively?

2. We Report Lives in Full (NYT communications team, obituary conventions)

An obituary is a biography, not an editorial. The same outlets covered his crimes in news reporting.

The New York Times defended its obituary directly, as a complete picture of a man. After backlash on X, the NYT comms team posted: "The Times's obituaries report and reflect lives in full, illuminating why, in our judgment, they were significant. We fairly and accurately include the newsworthy details of each life and death, and don't treat them dishonestly to score points like you're trying to do here." The response was widely seen as making the backlash worse, not better.

The convention is real, even if the execution is debatable. Obituaries include personal details—reading habits, appearance, temperament—alongside the political record because they aim to document a life, not render a verdict. Obituaries are a distinct journalistic form with conventions separate from news coverage. The question is where the balance point should be when the life in question involved 972 executions in a single year.

3. Some Got It Right (JNS.org, The Economist, TIME, Foreign Policy)

Not every outlet glazed him. The variation proves this is an editorial choice, not an industry standard.

JNS.org documented wide variation across outlets. The Economist wrote that Khamenei "grabbed power and held it, at bloody cost." TIME called his government "a de facto military dictatorship." Foreign Policy's headline: "Death comes to the dictator." The Guardian described him maintaining "theocratic rule at home" and "an anti-western axis of resistance in the Middle East."

CNN struck a middle ground. Their obituary noted critics saw him as "a feared tyrant bent on crushing those opposed to him while keeping his country isolated from the West." Not poetry and beards. Not editorial fireworks either. Just the record.

The variation is the story. If the Economist and TIME and Foreign Policy can call it what it was, the choice by the NYT and WaPo to lead with aesthetics is not a convention—it's an editorial decision. And that decision has consequences for how the public understands what just ended.

4. We Lived This -- We Know What He Was (Iranian diaspora, human rights organizations)

The diaspora celebrated in the streets while Western papers described his reading habits.

Iranians reacted with "joy and disbelief." Anti-regime expatriates staged rallies across Europe and North America, waving pre-1979 Iranian flags. Iranian diaspora filmmakers broadly celebrated his death as a blow against theocracy.

The human rights record speaks for itself. Mahsa Amini, 22, was beaten to death in morality police custody in September 2022 for wearing her hijab incorrectly. The UN documented more than 500 deaths in the crackdowns that followed and called them crimes against humanity. Amnesty International documented rape and sexual violence—against men, women, and children—used as a deliberate tool of repression.

The gap between the coverage and the lived experience is the real story. While the Post wrote about Persian poetry and Victor Hugo, Iranians who'd watched family members dragged into Evin Prison were watching Western media describe their tormentor as a man with an easy smile. That disconnect—between the avuncular portrait and the 972 executions—is what the Free Press and the diaspora are both responding to, from very different starting points.

Where This Lands

Nobody disputes that Khamenei presided over a brutal theocratic state. The argument is about whether Western media's obituary conventions are adequate to the task of describing who he really was. The critics—from the Free Press to Iranian expatriates—say the aesthetic framing is a form of moral evasion. The Times says obituaries "report and reflect lives in full" and that's what they did. The outlets that split the difference—the Economist, TIME, Foreign Policy—suggest it's possible to document a life without burying the body count. Whether the prestige press will change based on this round of blowback or runs the same playbook next time is an open question.

Sources

  • The Free Press—The Posthumous Makeover of Ali Khamenei: thefp.com
  • HonestReporting—Western Media's Grotesque Framing of Khamenei's Death: honestreporting.com
  • JNS.org—Wide variation in frames of Ali Khamenei obits: jns.org
  • CNN—Obituary: Who was Ayatollah Khamenei?: cnn.com
  • Washington Post—Ayatollah Khamenei obituary: washingtonpost.com
  • Fox News—NYT called out for Khamenei headline: foxnews.com
  • Breitbart—WaPo gives Khamenei glowing obituary: breitbart.com
  • Iran Human Rights—Khamenei's legacy of suppression: iranhrs.org
  • Human Rights Watch—Iran's 1988 mass executions: hrw.org
  • Amnesty International—What happened at the protests in Iran: amnesty.org
  • Amnesty International—What happened to Mahsa Amini: amnesty.org
  • Foundation for Defense of Democracies—Iran spends $16 billion annually to support terrorists: fdd.org
  • ADL—Iran still in Holocaust denial: adl.org
  • Brookings—Khamenei questions the Holocaust: brookings.edu
  • Boston Review—Khamenei and destruction of Israel: bostonreview.net
  • Iran International—Iranians react to Khamenei's death: iranintl.com
  • Globe and Mail—Diaspora divided on military intervention: theglobeandmail.com
  • Hollywood Reporter—Iranian filmmakers celebrate Khamenei's death: hollywoodreporter.com
  • Legal Insurrection—Legacy media obituaries almost forget repression: legalinsurrection.com
  • CJR—Soleimani coverage patterns: cjr.org
  • Nieman Storyboard—Fidel Castro and the art of the obit: niemanstoryboard.org
  • Poynter—The story behind the NYT's Castro obit: poynter.org
  • TIME—Ali Khamenei obituary: time.com
  • Foreign Policy—Death comes to the dictator: foreignpolicy.com