Of Charlatans, spinners and plain thugs

One of the most interesting (but also worrying) events in the reporting of Syrian uprising was the circulation of a photo of a battered three-year-old girl, with visible torture marks on her body and face. It was claimed that she has been tortured by “forces loyal to President Assad”. The photo went viral and was subsequently used by hundreds of media outlets in the west, both visual and print. After three days, however, it was established that neither the girl was a Syrian nor was she beaten by the forces. It is not surprising how reports about the Syrian uprising are being twisted by western and many Arabic language press continuously for the last one year. 

 

A close scrutiny of most of the reports by BBC, CNN, and France 24 suggest that there has been a clear lack of first hand sources on the ground. Most of the inputs are being attributed to a Britain based NGO, partially funded by the western governments, called The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Interestingly, there are at least two organisations of the same name and it is pretty unclear who is calling the shots. The person who is often quoted, but never shown either in video or in the picture, is a fellow called Rami Abdulrahman. Recently, it was exposed that no man of such name exists in the NGO. Now this is serious. The western press, and specially Britain based BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph and others based their entire reportage on this non-existing man’s version. 

 

The other worrying trend is the absence of primary sources, the claims and counterclaims becoming part of reportage. The issue is that these claims and counterclaims often come from the same organisation. For example, it was hammered for close to a week and a half that the people of Baba Amr were trapped in their homes as Syrian forces mounted counter offensive operations. It was suggested that a humanitarian crisis was in the offing. The source of the claim was of course the western supported, so-called, Free Syrian Army. The story sustained for 10 days before Free Syrian Army suddenly changed its stance and claimed that most of the civilians had been shifted to safe locations much earlier. CNN and France 24, along with The New York Times, The Washington Post and others reported both the claims one after another. No questions asked, no answers given. Clearly, the press either failed to see the dichotomy here or concealed it for reasons best known to them. 

 

Second, while the media as well as Free Syrian Army admitted that there were hundreds of armed fighters in Baba Amr, somehow, every armed fighter who died in the battle was shown as civilian to swell the number of civilian causalities. Let’s move to BBC now. It very proudly claims that its “correspondent on ground”, Jim Muir, “monitors the situation from Beirut.” Since Muir “reports” from Beirut, naturally, he parades his “ground witnesses” in Beirut only. Airtime was allotted freely to anybody who was willing to face the camera and speak. There was no background check, nothing. One of the so-called witnesses failed to admit on camera that he witnessed massacre. When the fellow was cajoled, he said that he “expects” massacre in the near future.

 

More interesting however is the story of ‘Syria Danny’, a 22-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent, who travelled to Homs during year end and started appearing as a witness on western channels, especially CNN. His daily ritual would include videos showing him ducking as shots ranged in the background, while he begged for armed intervention from the west and Israel. His, and CNN’s, luck ran out when a video appeared exposing how he asks his friend to start firing when he goes live and how footage from Libya were used to show massacre. 

 

Similarly, one Mousab Azzawi, claiming to be working for SOHR was paraded by BBC and CNN during live programmes for no less than two months. Later it was proven that the fellow had never seen even the inside of the SOHR campus leave alone working for them. In the same month, a blog purportedly written by a lesbian woman in Syria, which described among other things the massacre by Syrian forces, was picked by all the above mentioned visual and print outlets. A month later it was revealed that the owner of the blog was one Tom MacMaster, an American studying in Scotland. These are a few examples of how the media covers the Syrian uprising. Every story, including all of Reuters, AP and AFP, makes the statement of activists as the basis of reportage. Personal opinions are being presented as facts with little or no verification. Clearly, these so-called activists and experts have seen a chance to earn a few quick bucks and are happily doing so. The problem is, the press has remained silent, rather conspicuously.