11 June 2011 By Tariq Alhomayed Last week, in my article "The child who shook
Syria" [2/6/2011] I wrote that "respected Arab news
outlets in our region should not accept the emergence
of this phenomenon [so-called Syrian "analysts"
defending the regime in the media], and if the Syrian
regime wants to defend itself, it should do so through
an allocated official spokesperson, or through the
regime's Minster of Information…rather than through
these "analysts" who the media stations know, more
than anyone else, are not credible." Today we return once more to the same issue, and
that is for one simple reason. Yesterday the British
Sky News channel reported a story about the Syrian
regime's suppression of civilians, however the Sky
News presenter then said "and now, with us to comment
on this issue is a spokeswoman for the Syrian Foreign
Ministry." This British news channel did not agree to
host any Syrian "analysts" because it is a
professional media outlet that respects its viewers
and does not subject them to false propaganda, and so
the Damascus regime acquiesced and sent a fair-haired
spokeswoman [to comment]. This is something that our
own [Arab] satellite channels have failed to do! What is strange is that the Syrian regime attacks
Arab satellite news channels rather than thanks them,
for these are media outlets that give air-time to
these so-called "analysts". Indeed one such Arab
satellite news channel hosted one of these "analysts",
who live on air invited European ministers to visit
Syria, without the satellite news channel host asking
"in what capacity are you [the Syrian analyst]
extending this invitation?" Indeed if you were to
Google the analyst in question you would find that he
is not known to the press, but rather is described as
being a real estate contractor, whereas this same Arab
satellite news channel described him as a "media
figure", which is a description that has no basis in
reality. One is either a journalist or not; this
so-called analyst does not even have a single article
to his name, and cannot even be classified amongst
those writers who I personally term "the writers who
say 'invite me to write for you.'" These are the
writers who say, send me an invitation and an
[airplane] ticket, and I will extol your virtues, and
such writers are in abundance. What is even more serious is that this same Arab
satellite news channel broadcast a tape of a call
previously shown on official Syrian television,
claiming that this was an armed group targeting the
[Syrian] army. This is something that can only be
described as ridiculous and abhorrent, and something
that no respectable Arab satellite channel should
re-broadcast, particularly following the scandal which
saw a woman pretending to be the French ambassador to
Syria contact a French television news channel and
announce her resignation live on air, only for it to
be revealed that this woman was an imposter. This is
something that I previously described as "the return
of the false witnesses" ["Syria…Have the false
witnesses returned?" 9/6/2011], and this is an issue
that is connected to this same issue [of the so-called
Syrian analysts]. We also saw another Arab satellite
channel host a guest it introduced as an "Arab
intellectual", and who said that he feared Syria
becoming a sectarian state such as Lebanon, where he
said that sectarianism was 'institutional." However
this so-called "intellectual" seems to have forgotten
that it was the al-Assad regime – both the Hafez al-Assad
and Bashar al-Assad regimes – in coordination with
Iran that are responsible for institutionalizing
sectarianism in Lebanon in the first place. To return to the issue of the Syrian Foreign
Ministry spokeswoman who spoke to Sky News, and
because many of our Arab satellite news channels
prefers "ready information", i.e. news already
published by newspapers, let me say that the name of
the Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman is Reem
Haddad, and it is now up to these Arab satellite news
channels, of course, to try and contact her [to book
her to appear on their shows]. In any case, the objective of this article is not
to target the mistakes made by our satellite news
channels so much as it is an attempt to protect our
media as a whole from the deception of the Syrian
regime, which does not hesitate to exploit the media,
and has been doing so for decades. Patrick Seale, in
his 1989 book "Asad: The Struggle for the Middle
East", points out that the Hafez al-Assad regime
provided Sadegh Ghotbzadeh – an Iranian Minister under
Khomeini who was later executed – with a Syrian
passport which allowed him to travel to work against
the Shah [prior to the revolution]. This saw
Ghotbzadeh disguising himself as a reporter for the
Syrian "Al-Thawra" newspaper. Is this enough, or do I need to go on? Comments 💬 التعليقات |