But Bakhtiar also spoke frankly about mistakes she had made.

“God knows I’ve made a lot of mistakes on TV,” she said. Bakhtiar said that she had once mispoken and referred to a gay bishop as a gay bitch. The mistake made the Dave Letterman show.

“The funny thing is that every time you do something bad you get more famous,” she said.

In response to a question, Bakhtiar dismissed the notion that CNN was too liberal and said that the rise of Fox News was evidence that Americans like to see news that agrees with their viewpoint.

“Fox News has cornered the Republican market. I think what’s been done with Fox is great,” she said. “[It’s the] same way that People sells more magazines than the Economist.”

Throughout the discussion, Bakhtiar emphasized her Iranian roots.

She asked the Iranians in the audience what they thought about the prisoner abuse in Iraq and later asked them what they thought about her pronunciation of Iranian names with an Iranian accent.

“Some people don’t like it,” she said. “I feel like it’s my responsibility to say I’m Iranian. Occasionally we’ll get a couple [pieces] of hate mail.”

Bakhtiar said that being from Iran gave her a different perspective on the news.

“It’s amazing to be in a country—coming where we come from—seeing the secretary of defense being hammered for six hours. Democracy is alive here, maybe not well but alive,” she said.

“There is so much opportunity in America,” she said. “Even a five-foot nothing Iranian can have a prime-time show all over America.”

—Staff writer Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu.