Opinion- Reuters vs Assad's elections: credibility exam

(By Ethar Abdul Haq; Translation by Yusra Ahmed)

Reuters coverage of the Syrian Presidential election has drawn attention to the extent of mistakes, unclear and superficial dealing with events and Syrian revolution, accompanied with ignorance and unawareness of basic geographic, social and historical facts, this news agency and others practice.

Many agencies do the same, either intentionally or not, but Reuters mistakes however small, still considered big, compared to the size of this agency.

Only a day after Syrian presidential election, Reuters started its article with non discussable statement: “most Syrians voted for Bashar al-Assad, because they know the substitute would be the Islamic Extremists”

In comparing the language of this introduction with Syrian regime propaganda, a similarity is noticed, as “many” in this report equal to “countless crowds” in regime’s media, and “Islamic extremists” equal to words Bashar and regime’s media have been saying for more than 3 years like, “the last base of secularism, Minorities’ safeguarding, terrorists, expiatory, and Wahabis”

The news agency followed that unexpected introduction with another shocking statement: “many Western Leaders agree with that opinion” where Reuters only presented an opinion of one western political figure to support that idea, Rayan Croker, the former US Ambassador in Syria “1998-2001”, the same period when Bashar inherited the Syrian presidency from his father, as he might be one of the planners of that “Smooth transform of power” as Madeline Albright described at the time.