Thursday, March 09, 2017

Lousy Western media coverage of Middle East: why you need to know Arabic (the strange case of Liz Sly)

I have reported many times that Liz Sly qualifies as one of the worst reporters covering the Middle East today, and there is still competition. Just yesterday, she posted that Syrian regime media did not report about the anniversary of the Ba`thist coup. (Image shown).  In reality, the anniversary was marked in all Syrian regime media but how would she know? She only reads English.  In fact, she often reports what Syrian rebel media report without checking for verification.  I have attached an image of the front page of the Syrian regime mouthpiece below, where the anniversary is marked on the front page.  But then again: imagine if you send me to China, and I tweet observations about the Chinese regime media without any knowledge of Chinese.