Reporters are not covering the real stories in Mideast

The media monitoring group, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, or FAIR, studied 1,617 on camera US sources on the reporting of the 2003 invasion of Iraq between March 20 and April 9, 2003.They found 71% of all US sources were pro-war, only 3% anti-war.

The UK didn’t fare much better. Two studies, by Cardiff University and the German-based Media Tenor, found that the BBC gave just 2 per cent of its coverage to anti-war views in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. The same scenario exists now with the conflict in the Middle East where important news stories are being ignored. Stories such as Israel’s support for the Syrian rebels, aka The Islamic State and the arming and funding of Islamic State by Gulf states? The West’s main goal is not to defeat ISIS but regime change in Syria. Why are these stories not being covered?

Louis Shawcross