Abolfazl Fateh

Abolfazl Fateh (born 1966) is an Iranian journalist, medical doctor, and political adviser and activist, known as the founder of the state-run Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA).

Education
Abolfazl Fateh was born in November 1966. He graduated from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 1996, achieving the degree of Medical Doctor, and obtained his PhD from the University of Oxford with a thesis entitled "'The Power of News Production".

Career
Fateh was the director of Islamic Students Association at Tehran University from 1991 to 1996. On November 4, 1999, he founded the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) to report on news from Iranian universities that later covered a variety of national and international topics.

"Based in Tehran and founded in 1999 by Abolfazl Fateh an ex-aide to former Iranian presidential candidate and opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi-ISNA is often quoted by the major international news agencies and has been widely regarded as "a politically moderate news source" in Iran. "Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) was born in an era of major paradigmatic transformations in Iran's press and public discourse, which took place largely under the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005)".

There are reports that "In the relatively short period after its conception, the agency succeeded in reflecting political, cultural, scientific and social issues in an acceptable manner and succeeded in probing the darker corners of political issues". By ISNA, Abolfazl Fateh established a news agency model in Iran with the motto "one student, one correspondent" and "one idea, one news". ISNA demonstrated itself as a proggressive media and showed that how a "small media organization affects and changes social discourse" by "foregrounding a social issue, thematizing a discourse and problematizing social issues ”. ISNA was considered by Western media to be one of the most independent and moderate media organizations in Iran, and is often quoted.

While taking a reformist view of events, ISNA has remained politically independent. It has, however, maintained its loyalty to the former president and includes a section devoted to "Khatami's perspectives".

Abolfazl Fateh was taken to the court on several occasions over the agency's reports. He was beaten by riot police while supporting his correspondents to report student demonstration in June 2003., once he was beaten by police while supporting his correspondents to report student demonstration in June 2003. According to The Guardian, reformist daily Aftab-e Yazd 14 June 2003, in its Editorial column wrote: "It is not easy to overlook the injury caused to Dr Abolfazl Fateh, the hardworking managing director of the Iranian Students' News Agency, who had come to the scene to ensure an accurate reporting of events and prevent any news distortion by foreign media... [His] greatest concern was that if the people do not receive the news from us, they would do so from our enemies or at best from our competitors."

Fateh was ISNA's managing director until his resignation on 10 October 2005.

He served as one of Mir-Hossein Mousavi's advisors during the 2009 Iranian presidential election. He was banned from leaving Iran because of his role in the campaign. According to Reuters he responded to his ban “Such pressures can not push people like me to change our political stances.The imposed ban will not change my political views.” The ban was later lifted.

Politically, Fateh is aligned with Iranian reformists on the religious left wing, particularly Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Seyed mohammad Khatami loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini's political framework. He has been politically-active as a moderate reformist on a platform of reforming the system based on the Iranian Constitution.

Fateh has worked as a researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies in the UK, and is based in Manchester, England.