Times journalists escape after
kidnapping in northern SyriaTwo Times journalists have been kidnapped, beaten and shot at by a Syrian rebel gang
No, Martin Williams, not a "rebel gang." For two years, the Assad régime and the extreme Islamists have been kidnapping and murdering journalists in Syria, and the actual rebels have condemned this practice all along. It has meant that the destruction that Assad has wrought has gone unreported, while tame journalists who report from the government side are free to lie that the conflict is six of one and half a dozen of the other. If kidnappers disguise themselves as police, they aren't reported as a police gang. Buried lower in the story, we discover, "The pair did not escape until the Islamic Front, which was formed last year to counter extremists, heard the news and confronted the gang," but for many readers, the constant association of the Syrian revolution with the side of criminality is the only lasting impression left.