Through
selective reporting, the omission of facts and reliance on dubious
sources of information, media outlets have sought to twist the facts
and whitewash crimes committed by the rebels.
This week,
Syria saw one of its most deadly attacks against civilians fleeing
al-Qaeda-held areas in Al-Fu’ah and Kafrayah through a
government-rebel civilian swap. Rebels targeted and killed 126
people, including dozens of women and children, after a blast hit a
convoy of evacuee buses Saturday.
The
evacuees, all of whom were Muslim Shiites, were scheduled to be
bussed from the al-Nusra-Front-dominated Idlib Province as part of an
evacuation deal between the rebels and the government of President
Bashar al-Assad.
Strangely,
the fact that the victims targeted in the blast were all Muslim
Shiites was either outright ignored by the media or construed as
proof that they were “pro-Assad,” a term that much of the
mainstream media uses as a pejorative.
The rebels
in Idlib, where the bombing took place, have been proven to be
aligned entirely with the al-Nusra Front – otherwise known as
al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch. This group and their associates have a
specific interest in carrying out attacks against Muslim Shiites,
whom they consider to be heretics along with Syria’s Christian
minority and the Druze.
This
genocidal ideology, which has manifested itself repeatedly through
the actions of terrorist groups and rebels active in the Syrian
opposition, owes to the extreme Wahhabi leanings of these groups,
which seek to unite Syria under their particular brand of extreme
political ideology. Said differently, many of these extremist rebels
seek to create a politically-motivated theocracy that parallels that
of the Saudi Arabian government. This would only include Wahhabis and
extremist Sunnis who share their ideology – supplanting Syria’s
secular government, which has allowed a multiplicity of faiths to
flourish without fear of state persecution.
Despite
their supposed commitment to “democracy” and self-determination
in Syria, the media outlets that support the regime-change narrative
promoted by foreign governments have conveniently omitted these facts
from their coverage. For instance, Al Jazeera, funded by the Daesh
(ISIS) and rebel-supporting Qatari government, refused to even
mention the fact that the victims were Muslim Shiites, as well as
omitting the fact that the attack occurred in al-Qaeda territory –
even going so far as to imply that the attack was perpetrated by the
Syrian government.
Al Jazeera
was by no means alone in twisting the facts. The BBC, funded by the
pro-Syrian opposition British government, also insinuated that
Assad’s forces were to blame for the attack, even claiming that the
attack “would not be in the rebels’ interest” despite
the fact that extremist Syrian rebels have been calling for the
massacre of all Muslim Shiites in Syria for years and that even the
U.S. government has admitted that anti-Assad groups, particularly
Daesh, are committing acts of genocide against those of different
faiths.
In addition,
most mainstream media coverage – from CNN to the Huffington Post –
has concluded that there was “no evidence” that rebels
were involved in the attack or that no one could be blamed as “no
group had claimed responsibility.”
CNN went on
to dehumanize the Syrian victims fleeing al-Qaeda as Assad supporters
just because they were Muslim Shiites, and described the attack as a
“hiccup.”
One BBC
correspondent completely dismissed al-Qaeda and described the bus
attack as a false flag attack perpetrated by Assad’s government.
These news
outlets failed to mention that al-Nusra Front rebels have been caught
before burning civilian evacuation buses while also casting doubt on
the accounts of Syrian government sources that blamed a suicide car
bomber for the most recent attack. However, these same outlets had no
problem condemning Assad for the early April chemical gas attack that
occurred in the same province, despite the fact that Assad’s
government never claimed responsibility and that evidence has emerged
calling the details of the attack into question.
Also dubious
is the mainstream media’s continual reliance on only two sources of
information from inside Syria – the White Helmets and the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). As MintPress News has reported
in the past, the White Helmets are a mercenary-founded and Western
government-funded group that collaborates with the al-Nusra Front on
a regular basis and has even facilitated street executions of
civilians despite their “humanitarian” image.
SOHR, in
contrast, consists of just one man: the vehemently anti-Assad Rami
Abdul-Rahman, who lives in the United Kingdom. Abdul-Rahman’s
“sources” in Syria, from which he receives his information
regarding the war, are anonymous and never recorded – thus making
them completely unverifiable.
A
manufactured sectarian war
Since the
Syrian conflict began over six years ago, most media coverage of the
war – particularly that of news organizations from Western and
pro-regime change nations – has been noticeably slanted in favor of
rebel groups funded and armed by proxy nations with the interest of
ousting the Assad government.
Through
selective reporting, the omission of key facts and reliance on
dubious sources of information, including Western NGOs and rebel
groups operating alongside the Al-Nusra Front, these media outlets
have sought to twist the facts and whitewash crimes committed by the
rebels while ignoring their agenda of ethnically cleansing Syria of
anyone who refuses to follow their extremist Wahhabi political
ideology. In the process, the media has colored the Syrian crises
through a false narrative of Sunni survival against a power-hungry
Alawite Syrian government and expanding Shiite Iran – a narrative
that was manufactured by the rebels and their proxy nations to
justify their insurgency.
Through this
sectarian lens, rebels are using a “divide and conquer agenda”
supported by the proxy nations that are arming them to target Muslim
Shiites, Muslim Sunnis, Arab Christians, Druze, Zoroastrians and
other minorities in their fight to destabilize Syria, spread
sectarianism and drive the nation into a civil war in order to weaken
and eventually oust the Assad government.
The media
has worked to flip the narrative to glorify the rebels and frame any
atrocities committed by them as having been perpetrated by the Syrian
government. The BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN are the most prominent
examples.
Such
disparities have been commonplace over the past several years. The
last month alone has been particularly telling of the mainstream
media’s refusal to value the lives of innocent civilians equally,
instead only choosing to cover the deaths of civilians in Syria when
it supports the long-standing regime change agenda targeting Assad.
Arguably the
most dramatic geopolitical event of the year took place earlier this
month, when U.S. President Donald Trump chose to bomb Syrian
government forces, an act of alleged retaliation for a
still-unconfirmed chemical gas attack in al-Qaeda-held Idlib. The
attack killed an estimated 58 civilians, including nearly a dozen
children. The gas attack received non-stop media coverage, largely
because it served as a convenient pretext to further vilify Assad and
justify U.S.-led unilateral military action within Syria.
However,
higher civilian death counts that resulted from U.S.-led coalition
airstrikes went largely uncovered and failed to generate the same
level of outrage among these same media outlets, even though they
took place just weeks prior.
Considering
this, it is no small wonder that viewership and popularity of the
mainstream media have reached a historic low, given their propensity
to overlook journalistic standards and even manipulating tragedies to
sell a particular narrative – whether true or false – to their
audiences.
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