Iran's state-run Press TV reports that one of its correspondents was shot and killed by sniper fire on Wednesday in central Damascus, in an attack that also wounded the satellite news channel's bureau chief in the Syrian capital.
The correspondent, Maya Naser, 33, was born in Syria but reported for the channel in English. His wounded colleague, Hussein Mortada, is a Lebanese supporter of the Syrian government who also directs coverage of Syria for the Iranian government's Arabic-language satellite channel, Al Alam.
The channel's initial report on the deadly attack included audio of Mr. Naser's last dispatch. He was reporting live via telephone from outside a military headquarters in Damascus, bomb ed by rebels earlier in the day, when the line suddenly clicked off. Press TV said that Mr. Naser was shot by a sniper as he was speaking. A later report posted on the station's YouTube channel included footage of the correspondent just before the shooting, and an outraged statement from Press TV's news director in Tehran, who blamed governments that support the Syrian uprising for the reporter's “assassination.â€
A video report from Iran's Press TV on the death of one of the channel's correspondents in Syria.
“We hold Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who provide militants weapons to kill civilians, military personnel and journalists, responsible for the killing of Maya,†Hamid Reza Emadi of Press TV said. The news director also claimed that “the Western-backed killers in Syria are following the example of the United States in Iraq; the U.S. also sent snipers to assassinate people there.â€
Somewhat conf usingly, at least some of the video Press TV used to show Mr. Naser and Mr. Mortada in Wednesday's reports seems to have been filmed last week. The images were used in a report posted on Press TV's YouTube channel on Sept. 18, in which Mr. Naser said that the crew had been “ambushed by a group of militants†while traveling in a Syrian Army vehicle in the sprawling Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus. In that report too, Mr. Naser said that Mr. Mortada had been wounded by sniper fire.
A Press TV video report broadcast last week showing the channel's Damascus bureau chief in a hospital.
As The Lede reported in February, reports on the crisis in Syria from Iran's state-owned satellite channels usually echo Tehran's strong support for the government of President Bashar al-Assad, casting the rebels as foreign-backed “terrorists,†with little popular support.
There have been suggestions that the simi larity of Press TV's reports to those broadcast on Syrian state television is no coincidence. In April, when The Guardian published a trove of hacked e-mails taken from the in-boxes of Syrian officials, one message from Mr. Mortada to one of Mr. Assad's media advisers included a complaint about the government not heeding directions passed on to him “from Iran and Hezbollah,†the Lebanese militant group, about who Syria should blame for bomb attacks.
After the e-mail was made public, Mr. Mortada strongly denied that he had advised the Assad government and defended his work for Iran and Hezbolah in an interview with the Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.
Mr. Naser's report last week from the Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus illustrates how closely the Iranian channel hews to the Syrian government line on the conflict. Despite video and photographic evidence of recent anti-Assad demonstrations in the refugee camp, Mr. Naser claimed in his voice-over that the go vernment military operation he witnessed there, “began when Palestinian refugees in the camp requested the Syrian Army's help to clear the area from armed groups.†In his sign-off, he said the Syrian Army was “chasing foreign-backed armed groups†from the area.
Like many other Syrian bloggers and journalists, Mr. Nasr made frequent use of social networks in his work. In his final update on Twitter, he reported the explosions in central Damascus on Wednesday morning.
His impartiality as a reporter was called into question last month, when he was among the first to draw attention on Twitter to false reports of setbacks for rebel forces in Aleppo that were posted on a Reuters Web site by pro-Assad hackers. After the reports were exposed as a hoax, neg lected to inform his readers on the social network until The Lede drew attention to his role.
Although Mr. Naser's Twitter profile clearly displayed his face, and the Press TV logo, and he appeared regularly on camera in his reports, he wrote last month that he was worried about being identified as an employee of the Iranian channel. In early August, Mr. Nasr complained about the fact that one of his Twitter updates (with the self-portrait he posted there) and a report he filed for Press TV from the Syrian city of Aleppo had been featured in The Lede's report on the fake Reuters reports. “I am in a war zone, there is a price on our heads,†he wrote.
After a pro-Assad television studio was attacked in June, Syrian activists disagreed sharply about whether Syrian reporters whose work might be considered propaganda should be considered legitimate targets for armed rebels. Rami Jarrah, a Syrian opposition activist in Cairo, told The Lede then that while the faci lities of “state-controlled television†are “an element of the regime,†journalists are “absolutely not†legitimate targets for attack or assassination.
According to Press TV, Mr. Naser “studied political science at Kuplan University,†in the United States, possibly a reference to Kaplan University, a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company that offers online degrees.
While Mr. Naser's work for the Iranian channel was not overtly personal in nature, he did reveal his feelings about the conflict tearing his country apart on Twitter, where he regularly sparred with critics, and in blog posts. In a post on the Syria Politics blog two months ago, headlined “Night in Damascus,†Mr. Naser wrote:
Little bit after midnight, me looking out from the window of my bedroom inside Damascus city, watching a full sky moon and listening to the sounds of the army shelling rebels sites in outskirts, asking myself; is this real? Is this fire I can barely see is someone's house burning, or maybe neighborhood store? Is this my country on fire?
Then for a moment I convince myself, I am just dreaming and my day is going to be busy one, I better go sleep, I ought to wake up in few hours to go my work, multiple meetings are waiting ahead, then a lunch with my beloved girlfriend, afterward I have gathering with my best friend to discuss his wedding details. Basically; in few hours I have to get up to have another hard day of life? Who said life should be easy anyway!!!
Then I snap out of this sweet dream, just to remember, I lost my job! That friend of mine had been killed few weeks ago; his body was sent to his fiancé in a black bag! We didn't know why he was slaughtered; we didn't understand what his fault was! He was a doctor serving patients, never been into politics, but sure never been pro Assad, amid all this, the reality hit me, he was minority and the years his father spent at prison for being oppo sition for the current system didn't grant my friend any mercy, his ethnic roots were stronger to be noticed than his family position of this system! And yes this is my country, and this fire is at someone's place, someone I might never know but that doesn't mean he never existed!!!
