Covering Syria

The Arab Spring: Reporting Syria

In late January 2011, a Syrian man named Hasan Ali Akleh drenched himself with gasoline then lit a match in protest of oppressive governance by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, mimicking the self-immolation of Tunisian produce seller Mohamed Bouazizi a month earlier. With protests in Egypt already underway following the successful revolution in Tunisia, Akleh’s act was the first sign of trouble in Syria. Shortly thereafter, unrest began in the town of Dera’a following the arrest of just over a dozen young kids scribbling antiregime graffiti in solidarity with protesters in Egypt and Libya. Unlike some regional governments, which were swift to respond with concessions in an attempt to silence dissent, Syria’s government, which has forbidden demonstrations in the past. announced a ban on solidarity protests across the country, responding with its traditional iron-fisted tactics, arresting anyone who showed sympathy for the revolutionary sentiments sweeping the Arab world.

By March 2011, protests had picked up in frequency and attendance in Dara’a, and slowly started to heat up in other would-be hotspots like Homs and Hama. As it became increasingly apparent that Syrians would push for a full-blown revolution, news organizations, already stretched thin by events in Egypt and Libya, began sending reporters and news crews to Damascus to capture the boiling discontent–although government restrictions never allowed for the volume of journalists that had been covering the other uprisings. Assad’s government, traditionally stingy with journalist visas, instantly banned visits by most foreign journalists, but eventually reversed the decision, allowing some to obtain visas and work under tight supervision, the government claiming it was for the “safety” of journalists. ³

Local reporters, already operating under severe censorship restrictions were further strangulated, and many went missing, one after the other, with no hint of their whereabouts. ⁴ With regime survival at stake, it was clear that the Syrian regime would not show mercy to journalists, native or foreign. On April 29, 2011, Dorothy Parvaz, an Al-Jazeera journalist, entered Syria via Damascus to cover protests for the network. She was not heard from for the next nineteen days. The Syrian government eventually revealed that Parvaz’s passport had expired and she was deported to Iran, her country of birth. Parvaz, who holds Iranian, U.S., and Canadian citizenship, was eventually released by the Iranian authorities and sent to Qatar, where she resided. She described conditions in a televised interview and written chronicle on the Al-Jazeera English network.

“The beatings I heard almost around the clock were savage,” she said. “The first night I was there they took me out blindfolded and handcuffed into a courtyard, I am fairly certain, to scare me. . . . If they were going to shoot me, they really didn’t need a reason to do so.” ⁵

Parvaz’s experience highlighted the lengths to which the Syrian government will go to silence news on the uprisings. With time, fewer journalists were granted visas or accreditation to enter Syria, prompting them to take matters into their own hands. With many reporters relegated to Lebanon, news organizations were forced to rely heavily on contacts within Syria, many of them protesters and members of the opposition. Originally, government comment had come in various forms. Many news organizations cite state media for any official comment, since Syrian television and the Syrian Arab News Agency are deemed a mouthpiece of the government. Assad’s advisor Bouthaina Shaaban also served as a de facto government spokeswoman, providing comment to media organizations. However, this would not last and Shaaban would eventually fall silent, appearing only for State media photo-ops.

The Iron Curtain

Syria’s government has traditionally ruled over the media with an iron fist. News outlets are primarily owned and operated by the ruling Ba’ath party or individuals close to the regime. Criticism of the president, his family, or regime is strictly prohibited. Journalists who attempt to violate this practice are targets of harassment or worse. While the severity of censorship laws did ease somewhat when Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father as president in 2000, the emergency law allows government officials to detain journalists and political activists without due process.

Long before the Arab Spring, Syria’s heavy-handed tactics served one primary goal: survival of the regime. According to the Syrian Media Center, a domestic advocacy group shut down by the government in 2009, more than 150 websites are banned or censored, among them Amazon, YouTube and Facebook (The ban on Facebook was lifted in early 2011). While the government has admitted to censoring pro-Israeli and “hyper-Islamist” content, or content produced by the banned Muslim Brotherhood, independent activist groups say it also blocks websites with content catering to Syria’s Kurdish minority and those run by opposition groups. ⁶

The state of emergency, in place for almost 50 years at the time the uprisings began, allowed the government to control the content of all published works, ranging from books to newspapers, and survey broadcasts, advertisements, or virtually any form of media. If material was deemed a threat to national security, the government had the right to confiscate or destroy it. President Assad lifted the emergency law in April last year, one of few conciliatory measures by the government since the start of protests. Still, arrests and censorship continued. Orient TV, a privately owned Syrian network, relocated its headquarters to Dubai shortly after the unrest began, its owner Ghassan Aboud claiming that the government shut it down. In March 2011, Aboud claimed his employees in Dubai were receiving threatening calls from Syrian security forces demanding their resignation. ⁷ These claims could not be verified by the Syrian government.

In August 2011, Assad said he approved amendments to Syria’s media legislation, allegedly easing restrictions on the media. The new law aimed to end “any monopoly in the media sector” and urged “responsible freedom of expression.” It also warned that “any attack on a journalist will be treated as an attack on a Syrian government official.” In an August 2011 press release, Reporters Sans Frontiers called the new media law “ridiculous and schizophrenic, and borders on the absurd.” ⁸

Guerilla Reporting and Syria’s Citizen Journalism

With fewer reporters physically on the ground to bare witness to the events in Syria, it has become difficult to decipher between fact and fiction. Reem Haddad, formerly the spokeswoman for the Syrian Information Ministry and head of State television, told Sky News in June 2011 “I personally think [international journalists] should be allowed in.” She claimed that the Syrian military only fires when fired upon, contradicting the claims of opposition fighters. ⁹ Opposition members also claim that the government brutally attacks antiregime demonstrators while allowing pro-Assad rallies to take place in Damascus. Haddad addressed those claims in a March 2011 exchange with Al-Jazeera anchorwoman Folly Bah Thibault:

By summer 2011, a small handful of journalists managed to sneak into the country via the borders with Turkey and Lebanon and report firsthand on brutal government attacks, the escalation of protests, and the growing militarization of opposition forces. One journalist, whose name and publication will not be identified to protect his/her safety, said this of crossing into Syria clandestinely:

I had to verify my sources. It was clear to me early in this uprising that there was a lot of bullshit being disseminated, both by the regime and by activists. Of course, that’s not surprising given that each side has its own agenda and is working to project its version of the truth, but I’m astounded by how some journalists have relied on opposition activists as if they are objective relayers of facts. Just because somebody says they’re in Homs doesn’t mean they are. Just because somebody in Homs says something happened, doesn’t mean it did. Stories—irrespective of if they’re true—can spread quickly, especially in confined environments like refugee camps for example. That’s one of the reasons why covering Syria is so difficult. ¹¹

Some journalists who managed to make it into Syria safely were forced to take serious precautions to avoid getting caught. Accounts by journalists with the New York Times and TIME Magazine, for example, describe checkpoints and heavy security at hospitals, complicating efforts to enter and verify death and injury claims by opposition members. ¹² They describe activists—many of them teenagers—living underground, shifting from house to house, using a rare quiet moment to post messages and videos on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. ¹³

Ironically, as fighting intensified, access to opposition members and civilians increased. Opposition leaders began to flee as exiles, basing themselves in Turkey, Paris, London, and in the Persian Gulf. In October 2011, various opposition groups came together to form the Syrian National Council, based in Istanbul, Turkey. The group issues regular press releases and holds press conferences to address questions by the media. ¹⁴ However the SNC and the rebel Free Syrian Army, with which it is tempestuously linked, have both shown signs of splinters, and rifts among key players have highlighted the growing divisions among opposition members.

Civilians also fled Syria and continue to do so today, taking refuge, mainly, in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Many foreign journalists traveled to Antakya, Turkey, where refugee camps are steadily growing, documenting firsthand accounts of families, many with young children or elderly relatives, who say they traveled through treacherous conditions, escaping sniper bullets, bypassing unforgiving checkpoints, and slipping through mountains to make it safely to the other side. In an interview with the Guardian, former Information Ministry spokeswoman Haddad said that the Syrians in Antakya are there visiting family:

A lot of them find it easy to move across because their relatives are there. It’s a bit like having a problem in your street, and your mum lives in the next street, so you go and visit your mum for a bit. ¹⁵

But refugees are only a part of the story, and many journalists continued through 2012 to sneak in from Turkey via smuggling routes or through an underground tunnel across the border with Lebanon. The government response grew brutal. At the time of publication, at least four journalists are known to have been killed in Syria in 2012, according to Reporters Without Borders. ¹⁶ Among them, American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik were killed on February 22, 2012, in a shelling by the Syrian army on an unofficial media center in Homs. Colvin had been filing reports via telephone for various news organizations including the BBC, CNN, and others, and journalists who survived the attack suspect they were tracked down via their satellite phone signals. ¹⁷ Hours before her death, a video shot by Colvin of a toddler, bleeding to death from shrapnel wounds, was aired on CNN. In a telephone interview, she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper:

I feel very strongly that [the images] should be shown. Something like that, I think, is actually stronger for an audience, for someone who is not here, for an audience for which the conflict, any conflict, is very far away. That’s the reality. These are 28,000 civilians, men, women and children, hiding, being shelled, defenseless. That little baby was one of two children who died today, one of children being injured every day. That baby probably will move more people to think, “What is going on, and why is no one stopping this murder in Homs that is happening everyday?” ¹⁸

British photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier narrowly escaped death in the same attack that claimed the lives of Colvin and Ochlik but leaving Syria would prove harrowing for the two journalists, both of them severely wounded. For five days, the journalists were holed up in Homs, growing increasingly weak from their wounds and unable to move locations, with gunfire raining over the city. On the fifth day, rebels vowed to get them out—a seemingly impossible feat at that point. Conroy described his escape on Australia’s ABC radio:

The shelling was gently easing off when a contingent of the Syrian Free Army came in and literally said to us, “Paul, you’re going now.” So they picked me up—I couldn’t walk at that point with my leg—so they dragged me to a car, put me in the front seat of the vehicle, we drove under sniper and mortar fire through Baba Amr, outside through enemy lines, through about 5 kilometres of occupied territory to the escape tunnel.

That was the same tunnel we’d come in on, where I was lowered down on a rope to the bottomless shaft, put in a tunnel that we’d escape in on the back of a motor bike—they’d taken a motor bike down the hole which was just about big enough to get under if you leaned forward across the driver. And I was then driven down this tunnel for three kilometres. Halfway down the tunnel had in fact been hit by shells so it was blocked and they’d dug a tiny tiny hole through. ¹⁹

Syrian state television said this of Conroy’s narrative: “International journalists who entered Homs through illegitimate ways, their attempts in covering the so-called massacres in Homs, proved these atrocities did not happen. It begs the question of how truthful and how honest is the reporting of Paul Conroy.” ²⁰

We the People

I sat next to him on the mattress and watched as he traded messages with other activists on Skype, then updated a Facebook page that serves as an underground newspaper, then marked a Google Earth map of Homs with the spots of the latest unrest. “If there’s no Internet,” Abdullah said, “there’s no life.”—Anthony Shadid, New York Times, August 31, 2011. ²¹ (Two-time Pulitzer winner Shadid died in Syria in February 2012 from an apparent asthma attack.)

Citizen journalists had been making their mark on societies around the world long before Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia in December 2010. In Syria, Internet debuted in 2000, the year Hafez al-Assad died, as part of his son’s push toward modernization. According to cyber-watchdog OpenNet Initiative, Internet use over the next seven years soared 4,900 percent in Syria, surging past the global growth rate of 249 percent. ²²

Despite the country’s Internet boom, the web was used primarily for networking purposes, video games and web surfing by youth, as well as some light activism by opposition groups, all within the constraints of government’s censorship. However, when networking sites like Facebook and Twitter localized their websites by language, they took off across the Middle East as a form of communication and organization, particularly in countries like Egypt, where decades-old emergency laws prohibited public gatherings, particularly those that were political in nature. All the while, activism was proliferating, but remained dormant underground in cyberspace until the Tunisian revolution set activists loose across the region. Censorship prior to the uprising in Syria instilled young people with the know-how to operate around it.

By the time the Syrian uprising was in full swing, Tunisians and Egyptians had successfully ousted their leaders; Libyans had won the help of the international community in their fight against Muammar Qaddafi; and Bahrainis had been harshly suppressed by troops from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council. Following the example of their counterparts in the region, they turned to the Internet immediately, uploading videos of protests and filming victims as proof of the massacres taking place. While much of their effort was geared toward the international media, they also uploaded videos in an effort to motivate protesters in other parts of the country, many of whom were cut off from traditional forms of communication, or too terrified to express themselves outside an anonymous cyber-forum. Although the government closely monitors activities on the web, activists learned early-on how to maneuver around firewalls and censors. “We use a proxy server and change it almost every day,” an anonymous female Syrian cyber-activist told the Guardian newspaper in April 2011. “Today most young Syrians have mobile phones with high-quality cameras, so each one has become like a journalist. I upload videos and statements from Internet cafes. I leave after 10 minutes and don’t come back to the same one for a long time,” she said. ²³

When the trickle of journalists were kicked out of Syria, activists had no choice but to fill the void lest their cries for help be silenced by the gag order. News networks have increasingly relied on citizen journalists for coverage, turning to them for several “hits” or quotes a day. Early in the uprising, it was rare to find activists showing their faces on camera, networks often relying on phone calls and YouTube videos for the reports. However, activists have increasingly started using Skype to call into television networks to supply reports, an act of defiance against the regime that they regard as illegitimate. The online video calling website provided a safe alternative to mobile phones and landlines, deemed easily traceable deathtraps by many opposition members and mainstream journalists. They have even designated a number of “media centers” (often with a backdrop of the three-starred black, white, and green Free Syria flag) around opposition strongholds for the purposes of providing live reports.

The consequences have been severe. In May 2012, Abdul Ghani Kaakeh, a citizen journalist, died after he was allegedly targeted by security forces while filming a demonstration in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city. ²⁴ Bassel Shahade, twenty-eight, a filmmaker and graduate student at Syracuse University, was also killed in May 2012 in the city of Homs as he filmed clashes between protesters and security forces. ²⁵ Dozens are in captivity as well, and Reporters Sans Frontiers has issued repeated appeals for their release, accusing the government of severe brutality to those held captive. One citizen journalist, Mohammed Abdelmawla al-Hariri, was issued a death sentence in May 2012 for “high treason and contacts with foreign parties.” He was arrested in connection with an interview he had given to Al-Jazeera about unrest in his hometown of Dara’a. ²⁶

While the bravery of these young men and women is certainly commendable, there must be significant scrutiny among news organizations wishing to use footage or relay solely on information of citizen journalists, who will inevitably exert a biased position on events, just as the government exerts its bias. Citizen journalists, generally speaking, have little or no training in the balancing act of objectivity, and many cannot construct a comprehensive news narrative. They are also not trained technically, and many of the images and photos provided to mainstream media organizations are blurry or shaky as a result. With regard to Syria, claims are circulating by some news outlets that some citizen journalists have embellished the truth in order to capture the attention of the media—a distressing development for many news organizations relying heavily on these individuals for information. ²⁷

Conclusion

The task of maintaining pure objectivity in coverage of the Syrian uprising has been made virtually impossible, with fewer journalists on the ground as witnesses and diminishing access to government sources. The issue is further complicated as any apparent cohesion between opposition groups begins to erode and the conflicting agendas of those groups starts to surface. As most governments take a firm stance against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, it is increasingly reflecting in the tone of coverage, particularly with state-owned Arabic networks like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, which are failing to address the complexities of Syria’s political dynamics. The media are not completely to blame for this. The decision by the regime to significantly restrict media access will inevitably complicate coverage, ultimately having detrimental consequences for the innocent people dying every day in Syria. (The Assad regime claims to have given out hundreds of press visas, however the majority have gone to reporters hailing from China, Russia and a few other European nations). With serious uncertainties surrounding so many events in the country, the international community will continue to hesitate in formulating a collective response. Meanwhile, the blackout serves in fueling the survival of the Assad regime and a lifeline provided to him by the Russian and Chinese governments may ensure his success.

International policy makers are scrambling to craft solutions for this conflict, which has already shown signs of a spillover in Lebanon, and could jeopardize the security of the four other nations with which it shares a border—including Iraq, which still bears the unhealed war wounds of the past decade. However, with little access to unbiased ground reporting, the atrocities that are inevitably taking place in Syria are left without an objective narrative, and free to interpretation. While the temporary presence of United Nations monitors had provided some insight into realities on the ground, the government took considerable measures to shield them from much of the activities taking place—and the incessant violence eventually drove their chief envoy, Kofi Annan, to resign from the mission. ²⁸ With so many people dead, and many more lives at stake, the need for objective reporting is greater than ever.