According to this story from The Telegraph, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad apparently wasn’t aware that BBC reporter Paul Wood had been filing stories from the war-torn city of Homs until American journalist Nir Rosen tipped off his administration in an attempt to gain access for his own professional purposes.

Rosen denied any wrongdoing, attributing his correspondence with Assad’s camp as being a routine part of his job. –KA

The Telegraph:

A spokesman for the Revolutionary Council in Homs, who asked not to be named for his safety, accused Mr Rosen of “trading information about us and journalists in Homs with the regime in exchange for privileges from Bashar Assad’s regime.”

In an interview with the Telegraph, Mr Rosen said the only information he shared were links to stories already available on the internet and said that more senior Syrian security officials would have already known about the presence of Western journalists.

[…] “You deal with media people and you kiss their a— to get the access whether it’s the Taliban, the US military or the Syrian regime,” Mr Rosen said.

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