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Syria: Who Needs a Propaganda Operation When You Have the New York Times? Monday, 09 May 2011 22:05 Barry Rubin <http://www.rightsidenews.com/component/option,com_mailto/link,5fdab77236f12 511ffb2f6811ba6a6294807bf74/tmpl,component/> E-mail <http://www.rightsidenews.com/2011051013477/editorial/world-opinion-and-edit orial/syria-who-needs-a-propaganda-operation-when-you-have-the-new-york-time s/print.html> Print To be immoral is bad; to be immoral against your own interests is worse. No reporter has seemed more in the pocket of Hizballah and the Syrians than the New York Times' Anthony Shadid. His reporting on Lebanon often quotes mostly or exclusively their supporters, under a variety of labels, as if they are objective observers or represent a range of opinion. While his latest article <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/world/middleeast/10syria.html?pagewanted= 1&_r=1> includes some material on how bad the situation is in Syria--350 people identified as killed so far by the regime--it reads like a press release from the dictatorship. Not since the days of the Cold War--probably in the 1970s--has a U.S. government become such an apologist for a repressive dictatorship. What makes the situation truly amazing is that the Syrian government is no U.S. ally but an enemy repressive dictatorship. Shadid quotes Bouthaina Shaaban, a notorious Assad regime crony as saying, "You can't be very nice to people who are leading an armed rebellion...." Yet there is no evidence that the opposition has used weapons. Nevertheless, he reports without comment the regime's claim that demonstrators have killed 100 soldiers and police even though not a single such case has been even minimally documented. Shadid quotes U.S. officials as saying that Shaaban and Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa are the good guy reformers while President Bashar al-Assad's brother, Maher, is the bad guy hardliner. Poor Bashar is supposedly caught in the middle. What's a dictator to do? Shabaan ridicules international "sanctions" against Syria and is right to do so. They amount to nothing, nothing except a license for the regime to murder its citizens without fear of repercussions. Some day the Times coverage of Syria will be compared to its terrible reporting on the Stalinist Soviet Union and its largely ignoring the Holocaust. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtmlYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
