Saturday, March 24, 2012

Let us talk about Syria

Let us talk another point about covering Syria.  Has there ever been a Friday in which the protests were not "massive" and "huge"?  Has there been calls for strikes that failed?  I mean, months ago, the Arab (read Saudi and Qatari) and Western media blasted the news that the regime is about to crumble because the Syrian opposition in exile has called for "open-ended strike" all over Syria. Experts were brought in to TV screens to detail how this strike will deal the final blow to the regime.  Of course, the strike--whether you like it or not--failed miserably and no mention was ever made of it later.  Similarly, every day, the Saudi media (especially the politically sleazy and vulgar mouthpiece of Prince Salman, Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat--one of the worst specimen of media anywhere in the world) announce in big headlines that protests "finally" hit Aleppo and Damascus.  And they then repeat the same headline again, not knowing that their coverage has become a joke.  Similarly, Western media never ever once said: that the protests in Syria today are not as big, thereby leaving readers with the impression that protests are either as strong as yesterday or even stronger, which is just not a reasonable position of coverage.  No uprising maintains the same momentum day after day, not even the Egyptian uprising last year.  So it is quite obvious that the media are rendering propaganda and not media services. Yesterday, for example, the protests were clearly and obviously weaker than before.  Only the New TV of Lebanon, which maintains a unique level of level-headedness in its coverage of Syria (thereby upsetting both the regime and the opposition), they started the coverage of Syria by saying that protests were weak yesterday.  Even the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had to admit that and give this explanation: they said that the regime shelled neighborhoods and that they deployed troops.  I mean, is there nobody in the media to respond by saying that they have been deploying troops all along and yet protests were taking place?  Just try to be professional--once in a while only.  I know coverage of Syria is political through and through and has no connection to the mission of the press.