TEHRAN - The news about Iran is usually distorted by certain foreign mass media and news agencies, which try to sensationalize events happening in Iran while playing down the very same news in other countries.

In fact, the foreign media are using this double-standard policy to tarnish the image of Iran throughout the world and to isolate the country.

AFP, which usually sensationalizes events in Iran, reported on Wednesday that eight Iranians sentenced to death for murder were hanged at dawn on Wednesday in Tehran's Qasr Prison.

It underlined, "The eye for an eye' law in force in Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 calls for execution for all murders."

It is clear that the agency seeks to link the issue to Islam and the Islamic Revolution and not to the crime itself, which was murder.

However, in another story on an execution in the U.S. State of Oklahoma, AFP simply mentioned that a convicted "killer" was put to death by lethal injection late Tuesday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

It reported that Jerald Wayne Harjo, 40, was executed for the 1988 rape and murder of 64-year-old Ruth Porter after he broke into her rural Seminole County home, apparently looking for the keys to her van, which he wanted to steal.

Everybody knows that Harjo has not been executed according to Islamic law, but for the crime he committed. AFP should cover the news on all countries impartially, considering the fact that such distortions and biased coverage will certainly damage the agency's credibility.