In the past few months, three Western women have gone to Syria, two of them by invitation and the third on a regime-approved reporting trip. The first two are now on "speaking tours" to explain "what's really happening in Syria" to the Western public. The third one, however, was kicked out of Syria by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Her crime? "Untrue reporting" in the form of sharing tweets containing photos and witness accounts from people in besieged Eastern Aleppo, because the regime wouldn't give her or the other journalists with her access to that part of the city. [...]
The first two of these women, however, call themselves independent journalists, yet post gushing photos of themselves posing with Bashar al-Assad on social media, appear on Russian state television to peddle the Assad regime's lines and travel across the United States to accuse anyone opposing Assad of being an al-Qaeda sympathiser.
Channel 4, Snopes, EA Worldview and Pulse Media and others have done thorough fact-checking debunking Bartlett in particular. There is no need to rehash their findings. [...]
For six years now, even the United Nations, which itself is guilty of being biased towards the regime in more ways than one, cannot but admit that the biggest criminals in Syria are the regime and its allies. [...]
Nuance in analysing Syria has been and continues to be a problem across pro-regime, opposition and even "neutral" media. This has been particularly evident as the world suddenly woke up to the fact that something bad was indeed happening in the country only in the past few weeks as eastern Aleppo made headlines.
No comments:
Post a Comment