Deja Vu in Syria

As the media talks of WMDs and calls for intervention, have journalists already forgotten the lessons from Iraq?

Weapons inspectors, WMDs and calls for intervention - deja vu? Plus, journalism reinvented: the challenges of covering the Syrian war from afar. The media story in town this week has got to be Syria. In a conflict as long and bloody as this, it takes a significant development in the story to regain the international media's attention. And that happened on August 21, when graphic video surfaced on social media sites, showing victims of chemical weapon attacks. The US, UK and French governments all blamed the Syrian military under President Bashar al-Assad. The subsequent debate in the international media presented a multiplicity of narratives, depending on where the news was being written or broadcast and what political relationship their country had with the Assad government. Russia, China and Iran have all used their state-owned media to cast doubt over whether or not it was the Syrian military that was responsible for the attack, but it is not as though Washington, London and Paris were tuning in.