'Mainstream Media' either mute or partaking in manipulation of events' coverage

"... YouTube pictures may have played a positive role in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, but the international media is largely mute about how easy it is to manipulate them. Pictured from the right angle, a small demonstration can be made to look like a gathering of tens of thousands. Shootings in one street in one town can be used to manufacture "evidence" of shooting in a dozen towns. Demonstrations need not be genuine events luckily captured on mobile phone cameras by concerned citizens; frequently the only reason for the protest is to provide material for YouTube. Television companies are not going to reject or underline the stage management of film that is free, dramatic, up to date – and which they could not match with regular correspondents and film crews even if they spent a lot of money.
In the print press, bloggers get an equally easy ride, even though there is no proof that they know anything about what is going on. Hence the ease with which a male American student in Scotland was able to pretend to be a persecuted lesbian in Damascus....
Governments that exclude foreign journalists at times of crisis such as Iran and (until the last week) Syria, create a vacuum of information easily filled by their enemies. These are far better equipped to provide their own version of events than they used to be before the development of mobile phones, satellite television and the internet. State monopolies of information can no longer be maintained. But simply because the opposition to the Syrian and Iranian governments have taken over the news agenda does not mean that what they say is true.
Early last year I met some Iranian stringers for Western publications in Tehran whose press credentials had been temporarily suspended by the authorities. I said this must be frustrating them, but they replied that even if they could file stories – saying nothing much was happening – they would not be believed by their editors. These had been convinced by exile groups, using blogs and carefully selected YouTube footage, that Tehran was visibly seething with discontent. If the local reporters said that this was a gross exaggeration, their employers would suspect that had been intimidated or bought off by Iranian security....

The political elite in Washington and Europe was divided for and against the US invasion of Iraq, making it easier for individual journalists to dissent. But today there is an overwhelming consensus in the foreign media that the rebels are right and existing governments wrong. For institutions such as the BBC, highly unbalanced coverage becomes acceptable.
... al-Jazeera, which has done so much to shatter state control of information in the Middle East since it was set up in 1996, has become the uncritical propaganda arm of the Libyan and Syrian rebels.The Syrian opposition needs to give the impression that its insurrection is closer to success than it really is. The Syrian government has failed to crush the protesters, but they, in turn, are a long way from overthrowing it. The exiled leadership wants Western military intervention in its favour as happened in Libya, although conditions are very different.The purpose of manipulating the media coverage is to persuade the West and its Arab allies that conditions in Syria are approaching the point when they can repeat their success in Libya. Hence the fog of disinformation pumped out through the internet..."