Al-Monitor, an online news site that conveys and translates news from the Middle East, is facing questions about perceptions that it has been conveying the line of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. It is also facing questions about its founder and owner, Syrian-born businessman Jamal Daniel, who has made large investments in As-Safir – a Beirut daily variously described as “pro-Assad” and as supporting “the pro-Assad Lebanese group Hezbollah.

The two issues were both discussed this morning in a Tablet Magazine expose:

Observers assert that the arguments and positions of the Assad government receive heavy coverage in the site’s “Lebanon Pulse” section, with an emphasis on translated material from pro-Hezbollah, pro-Assad media outlets as well as original content produced for Al-Monitor by writers who also work for pro-Hezbollah, pro-Assad media…

Until Al-Monitor was founded, pro-Hezbollah journalists could only publish in resistance media outlets. In Al-Monitor, by contrast, their work is printed alongside reporting and analysis that falls within the mainstream of public policy discourse. Several of Al-Monitor’s critics point specifically to August 2011, when Al-Monitor’s founder and owner, a Syrian-born businessman named Jamal Daniel, bought a large share of As-Safir—a Beirut daily newspaper that the New York Times has variously described as a “pro-Assad Lebanese newspaper,” and “a left-leaning publication that often supports the pro-Assad Lebanese group Hezbollah.”

The report goes on to suggest that Al-Monitor seeks to convey the “narrative put forth by the Assad government” regarding the Syrian opposition, with stories emphasizing among other things “that the opposition is dominated by dangerous Islamists affiliated with al-Qaida.” A rough count of articles is presented.

When asked to comment, Al-Monitor’s editor-in-chief was not forthcoming. The outlet’s counsel demanded that “this has to stop”:

I also tried to speak with Al-Monitor’s editor-in-chief and CEO, Andrew Parasiliti, who previously served as foreign policy adviser to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel when he was in the Senate. (According to his biography, Parasiliti had never worked in journalism before being hired to run Al-Monitor.) Parasiliti refused to comment, instead referring all questions to Al-Monitor’s counsel, Viet Dinh. Dinh, who served Assistant Attorney General of the United States under George W. Bush and is widely reputed to be one of the chief architects of the Patriot Act, also refused to address questions about Al-Monitor’s coverage. “You can’t throw a firebomb into a theater and claim as an excuse that someone else gave you the bomb,” Dinh wrote in an email. “This has to stop.”

[Photo: M2545 / Wiki Commons]