"American Misconceptions of Syria"
Download PDF About the AuthorFeras Aboukhater is a third-year undergraduate student with a Biology major and a minor in Medicine, Health, and Society at SUNY Stony Brook University. He wrote this research paper for his WRT 102 class in his freshman year. Feras plans to go into medical school when he is done with his undergraduate degree and he aspires to become a Cardiologist. ContentsHow Fox News Frames the War in Syria What Living in Safe Parts of Syria Looks Like Balancing Between Conflict and Peace |
The Solution for This MisunderstandingA great but impractical solution is that Fox News sends a reliable and well-known reporter to Damascus so that they can stay there for a week and show people what they are seeing in Damascus on a daily basis. If Americans saw a daily report made by a well-known American reporter in Syria, they would surely begin to think twice about what is going on in Syria, developing a fuller story in their minds. Getting visas to Syria can be easily achieved for the reporter, the camera operator, and the crew; however, there would be some restrictions by the Syrian government, and that is completely normal. The restrictions would be that the journalistic team cannot go to places where there is fighting because the main reason for them to come is showing the bright side of Syria, not the war side that everybody knows about. If this term was accepted by Fox News, it is guaranteed that the visas would be out in a short period of time. I should be clear that this restriction does not affect the freedom that the journalistic team has inside Damascus or in any city where there is no fighting. Another thing is that the government would assure safety for this team inside the unrestricted areas. Unfortunately, this term won’t be accepted by Fox News because they are not going to change their agenda so that they can show the bright side of Syria, and that’s what makes this solution impractical. Surprisingly, an American TV channel called One America News Network did part of what I am calling for and sent a reporter to Damascus last month; however, that did not have any positive effects because the TV channel does not have a high rate of viewers, and the reporter was not well known, and that’s why I am emphasizing those two aspects to get good results. The fact that this step was accomplished by an American TV channel encourages me to suggest it to Slate or The New Yorker, because those two news outlets are more likely to take up this effort than Fox News. A more practical solution can be achieved by the cooperation between the UN and well-known American TV channels. As I have said earlier, Fox News and American TV channels more generally rely on UN reports because of the importance this organization has. A proof to my point is the article “UNICEF: More than 40,000 children at risk in Syria's Raqqa,” which is an Associated Press article covering a UN report about Syria and published on the Fox News website. Asking the UN to make a specialized report for American TV channels about normal life in Damascus is not a peculiar thing and can be done without needing huge funding. There are many UN reporters and employees living normal life in Damascus, and they would never refuse to make such a report because it is about the life they are living, but the thing is that nobody asks them to do that. I believe I am the first one to do that, and I hope that my voice gets heard. I believe that those reporters have some respect for Syria no matter where they are from, and they really would be interested in trying to change Americans’ views towards Syria because this country gave them their work and it’s a responsibility for them to give it something in return. You would probably say that Syria did not give them their work; however, that is not a good argument because Syria is where they are working, and if your place of work is gone that means that your work is gone too. The funding of this report can be achieved by a non-governmental Syrian organization called Massar because this organization’s goal is to help Syrians wherever they are, and funding this report can help Syrians abroad with their big challenge of changing people’s views towards their country. After this report is specially made for well-known American TV channels, those American channels should present it in their news because then they would not have any excuses. Why would they rely on UN reports but ignore this report? Refusing a report like this would not give a good reputation for American TV channels. The UN has always had a great role in bringing invisible issues to the forefront such as marburg fever, cholera sufferers, child soldiers, modern-day slavery and many other issues that we would never have heard of without this organization. On Google Scholar, I searched for the term “Marburg fever” all the years before the UN began publishing reports and news articles on marburg fever, starting in 2005 with the report “Marburg virus has killed 244 but fatalities are decreasing, UN health agency reports,” and all the years after. Google Scholar turned up 217 articles published in all the years prior to 2005, and after, it turned up 436, which represents a 50% increase in the number of articles over a much shorter period of time. This correlation doesn’t represent a causation; however, it gives me hope that the UN has an effect on raising awareness in the world and that the solution I am calling for can be realistically achieved by this organization. |