The Syrian Assad regime has “killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as ‘the slaughterhouse’,” according to an Amnesty International report covered by The Associated Press. This is the same regime that has used chemical weapons to control its own people. Despite all three networks posting the AP story on their official websites yesterday early afternoon (ABC was the last at 1:56 PM), the evening shows of ABC, CBS and NBC refused to mention this staggering report.
The atrocities of the Assad regime are not in question, and, yet, network journalists have given this brutal dictator the benefit of the doubt during interviews.
On July 13, 2016, NBC’s Bill Neely thought it was appropriate to ask the Syrian dictator if Donald Trump was qualified to be President of the United States, posing questions like “Mr. Trump has no experience in foreign policy. Does that worry you?”
And Neely isn’t alone in giving softball interviews to Assad. While covering the dictator on September 3, 2013, ABC's Martha Raddatz described the him as "looking poised and immaculately dressed."
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On February 5, 2007, six months after Assad allegedly used chemical weapons on his own people, then-Good Morning America anchor Diane Sawyer asked him "You like video games?...Do you have an iPod?"
After the dictator announced that he did, Sawyer sounded more like a fangirl than a seasoned news anchor: "And you're a country music fan. Faith Hill? Shania Twain?" She then moved on to the topics of what films Assad enjoyed. The fan of chemical weapons and gassing his own people touted The Pursuit of Happyness. He blurbed, "It tells you a story...Maybe there's many beneficial things to learn from, about real life."
