It has been more than 35 years since the Islamic revolution culminated with the slogan "freedom and republicanism" and 17 years since Iran s newspapers were recognized for the first time as the fourth pillar of civil society and as the columns of democracy under then-president Mohammad Khatami. Today, the Islamic Republic s newspapers are experiencing conditions as bad as those during after the 1907 - 1907 Constitutional Revolution and the 1953 coup against then-prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq.