Syria & ME War Media Lies

​Exposed: Eight Years of Media Lies About the Syrian Civil War - Reporter for Der Spiegel, Claas Relotius May Face Charges

5-7-19, * -- Recently Claas Relotius, a German reporter for Der Spiegel, wrote a piece about being embedded with a militia patrolling the Arizona border for illegal migrants. Gullible German leftist readers were regaled with tales of the militia, … with novelistic accounts of pro-Trump Americans that confirmed all the stereotypes of Der Spiegel’s readers. However, much of the article was factually wrong and that Relotius had never even bothered talking to the people he claimed to have been writing about. And a woman doing media relations for the militia contacted Der Spiegel and informed the magazine that he had never been there. That was the beginning of the end of the big lie about the recent Middle Eastern wars/events:

1. Syria: The 8 yr civil war story began with a group of boys who were reportedly detained and tortured after one of them spray-painted anti-government graffiti that international media outlets from CNN to Qatar’s Al Jazeera, Time & more broadcasted. As the story goes one boy scrawled “It’s Your Turn, Doctor” and started the cycle of violence that led to the fighting in Daraa & across Syria; the age and name of the boy has changed many times:
   1. in 2013 Daily Mail reported he was Bashir Abazed, 15 yrs old.
   2. In 2013 Germany it was 15 yr old Bashir Abazed and in 2016 he was Abdulrahman al-Krad
   3. in 2016 Canada’s Reuters reported it was 16 yr old boy named Mohammed
   4. in 2017 Globe & Mail reported it was Naief Abazid, 14 yrs old.
   5. in 2018 Al Jazeera reported it was Mouawiya Syasneh, 14 yrs old.
2. Egypt: The Arab Spring originated by the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar, Obama administration and some of its European allies and the overthrow of the targeted governments.
3. Tunisia: A fake story of a street vendor who was slapped by a policewoman and his family blames his bizarre reaction of setting himself on fire, on a sexist reaction to being humiliated by a woman.

 
Reportedly, there are at least six boys who started the Syrian war with that grafitti. Some of them are actually men. They all have different names. Some have different ages. Even the accounts of the ages of their friends who were also there, ranging from 9-year-olds to adults, vary wildly between different stories from major media outlets.
 
In their sensationalist stories about how the Syrian Civil War began, media outlets failed to even acknowledge that other outlets had published claims that fundamentally contradicted their own. Instead, journalists who claimed to have interviewed the boy[s] in cafes, safe houses or ruined cities posing smilingly for photos or hiding their faces were celebrated and even honored.
 
Reporting on a war in another country is tricky, the media insists on the right to fact check conservatives and erase them from social media, but fails at the most elementary levels fact checking when it comes to its own stories. 
 
Claas Relotius was only the latest media journalist to wade into the story of the boy who started the war. He was lying; but it was a lie so commonplace in his industry that it was normative behavior. The 6 boys’ story is undeniable proof that the media cannot be trusted to police its own facts, let alone those of its political opponents. That it is not an industry of facts, but an assembly line of propaganda. And that it’s reporting on major issues, including wars in other countries, is quite often fake news.
 
If you don’t believe that, ask the media how the Syrian Civil War started. Then ask if his name was Mohamed, Naief, Bashir, Mouawiya, or Abdulrahman. 

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Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine at the above link.
 
*Excerpted and adapted full original message from Daniel Greenfield here

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​Der Spiegel 'fake news' reporter could face charges - BBC News-Dec 23, 2018
4-22-19, SCMP.com -- The German reporter Claas Relotius, accused by top news agencies for solicited donations for Syrian orphans and faking stories ... ​Relotius told Spiegel he regretted his actions and was deeply ashamed. “I am sick and I need to get help.” More here