Keeping the Spotlight on Syria’s Independent Media

Since 2013 more journalists have been targeted and killed for their work in Syria than anywhere else in the world, according to CPJ research. As the risk of assassination and kidnapping has increased, major news organizations including Associated Press and Agence-France Presse have stopped sending staff reporters to the country,leaving a critical gap in mainstream media coverage of the war, particularly in English.

In parallel, local journalists and citizen media networks have worked to cover the war since the conflict first began. And as foreign media have pulled back from Syria, these local reporters have become an increasingly critical source of information and documentation of violence. While citizen media groups reporting from Syria face equal if not greater risks than their foreign counterparts, their stories rarely make headlines in Western media.