Reporters’ nightmare

The difficulty of reporting in rebel areas has let the regime tell its own narrative"Television footage of the relatively calm centre of the capital, Damascus, makes the regime look more in control, while recent rebel advances in the north are barely reported. The government recently facilitated reports on the presence of ruthless Islamist fighters in Maaloula, a town of Christians, whom the regime depicts as under threat from the rebels. Meanwhile, thousands of Syrian civilians mass in camps in the north, unseen on Western television screens, as they flee from salvoes of regime rockets."