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For many years, specialized media stood alongside the mining and steel industry, narrating everything from production and exports during boom times to project inaugurations and industrial records, conveying the image of these achievements to the public, policymakers, and economic actors. However, today, in the year 1405 (2026), those same media have become the first victims of cost-cutting policies, in a meaningful silence. The names of these victims do not appear on any workforce reduction lists, yet they have practically been removed from the content production and information dissemination cycle.
Companies emphasize they have not implemented workforce reductions, but the reality is that terminating media contracts precisely means the elimination of journalists, editors, analysts, and content creators. This is a silent layoff that is carried out without official announcement, accountability, or transparency. A media outlet that has played the role of the industry’s narrative arm for years has now been reduced by managers’ views to a cost line item that can be cut. This perspective is neither economical nor professional, but rather a sign of a weakness in understanding the role of media in the industrial value chain.
This viewpoint reveals a clear contradiction in managerial behavior. The very organizations that pursued even the slightest media criticism with heightened sensitivity place media as the first option to be cut during budget planning. Media is important to them only when it must create a positive image or control a crisis, but in times of financial crisis, it is quickly relegated to the category of unnecessary expenses.
This dichotomy is not just a simple managerial mistake but a dangerous behavioral pattern. An industry that expects to maintain credibility with the public cannot discard its primary tool of credibility-building at the first economic pressure. The result of such behavior is a gradual weakening of public trust and erosion of the industry’s social capital—an asset that is not easily built but can be lost easily.
Specialized media are not part of advertising formalities that activate in good times and go silent in hard times. These media are a consistent part of the country’s industrial memory—a memory that records both successes and errors and challenges. Eliminating this memory means eliminating the professional narrative of the industry, leaving the field open to non-specialized and distorted narratives.
In such conditions, reducing support for media is not merely a financial decision; it is essentially a retreat from transparency. When the flow of professional information is weakened, the void is filled by rumors, non-expert analyses, and external narratives. This is the exact point where the industry loses control over its narrative and must face the consequences in public opinion.
The main contradiction lies here: media is valuable to managers only when it must highlight achievements or manage criticisms, but as soon as economic pressure arises, the same media become the target for elimination. This behavior is not only unfair but also costly in the long term, since no industry can maintain a sustainable position in public opinion without a professional narrative about itself.
If today specialized media is removed from the support cycle, rebuilding this capacity tomorrow will be very difficult. The trust, communication network, and professional experience of media are not recoverable with a budget decision. Removing media means the gradual removal of the industry’s voice, and an industry that loses its voice will sooner or later have its narrative written by others.
Mohammad Reza Ebrahimi
Managing Editor of the “Madan Nameh” News Portal