Al-Assad discovers that his media is corrupted and assigns head of corruption to fight it

(Zaman al-Wasl)- Bashar al-Assad said that the Syrian media is corrupted and needs to be cleaned during his talk to al-Watan newspaper owned by his cousin Rami Makhlouf. The talk is to be published on Thursday.

Bashar al-Assad’s statement in relation to the media comes after a long series of corruption cases which were revealed in the media institution subordinate to the regime and represented by ministry of media which Bashar assigned to fight corruption which the ministry is accused of in the first place.

The minister’s TV

The most important talk now is that the Syrian Arab TV employs more than 10000 employees and the TV does not need more than 500 employees to the level of production, this is according to the international journalist institutional standards.

Syrian journalists realize that any minister of media employs relatives and people from his network in the Syrian TV as soon as the minister is assigned his post. It is no coincidence that minister of media has an office and bedroom in the building of TV and Broadcasting.

The most prominent corruption cases in the Syrian TV was inventing the job called al-Bunat. Journalist and writer Thaer al-Zazu said that former minister of media Mohamed Salman employed more than 1700 in this job in the TV. Their names would show in programs and news although most of them do not do any work.

Recent information coming from the TV indicates that al-Bunat employees’ number has doubled since then.

Relatives and nepotism

Al-Zazu confirmed to Zaman al-Wasl that all employees in the ministry of media who were getting their salaries from the TV in the new description.

He added, “nepotism is the most prominent form of corruption. Who families now are executive employees in the staff. The internal and external missions were assigned to those people regardless of professionalism and qualification. Also, there is unbelievable financial corruption which is represented by huge numbers to pay the cost of programs which are done outside the building of the TV. The numbers double the real cost.”

Al-Zazu ddisapproved that Bashar al-Assad assigned ministry of information to fight corruption in media institutions when the ministry is the head of corruption and its sponsor. He considered that the corrupted one cannot fight corruption and hence nothing will change in al-Assad media institutions.

Al-Assad demands to fight corruption comes a day after pro-regime media published a news piece about corruption in state-run media SANA. 

SANA had announced editing jobs and other jobs and only 10 took the jobs. Later, it turns out that SANA director Ahmad Dawa has given the jobs to his relatives and to other individuals recommended by security officers or big officials in Assad regime.

Nest of corruption

State-run SANA news agency is considered one of the institutions where corruption is widespread according to journalist George Mayala who confirmed that the agency still publishes news of journalists who defected from the agency since three years.

Mayala added, moral corruption in regime media outlets has fulminated which made it very low professionally. Even though the corruption goes back before the revolution, but it aggravated following it. 

It is hard to describe the footages and photos of news broadcasters with the bodies of civilians martyrs outside the framework of ethical and professional crimes, but “al-Assad’s desire in fighting corruption will not address this for sure.”