By BEN HUBBARD
BEIRUT, Lebanon — As the Syrian government took back eastern Aleppo from the rebels in December, the story you heard in the Arab world about what was happening largely depended on where you got your news.
On some channels, it was a heroic tale of the Syrian Army’s “cleansing” the area of “armed groups” or “terrorists” before leading a process of “reconciliation.”
On others, the “regime” had routed “the revolutionaries” and planned to carry out “ethnic cleansing” against “the Syrian people.”
Such drastically different narratives of the same event are prominent features of the media landscape in the Arab world, a reality that I have had to learn to navigate during a decade living and working here as a journalist.