From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

Brooke Gladstone is reporting in Mexico this week.

I'm Bob Garfield.

Throughout most of the uprising against Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad,

journalists have been on the outside looking in.

While forces allied with Assad perpetrated one bloodbath after another, Syria kept its borders sealed, leaving the press to

depend on second-hand accounts of atrocities in Homs and elsewhere. Now, though, a number of Western

news organizations have been granted visas, but has the presence of reporters on the ground confirmed the outside's worst fears or made the situation murkier?

Paul Danahar of the BBC says that as access has increased, so has the story's complexity.

Paul, welcome to on the media.

Thank you.

It must be very easy to report

from Damascus because the narrative is so straightforward. Assad runs a brutal, oppressive regime,

and the West is frustrated at every turn from protecting the good guys, the opposition rebels.

Pretty simple, right? The beginning it was, unarmed protesters,

bravely standing up against men with guns. And it didn't work. What happened was the regime

just cracked down even harder. And so some elements of the opposition turned to a military

solution to their revolution. Then other regional players started sticking their finger in

the pie. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they actively began supporting the rebel groups

with money and with arms. So that's complicated. It's also we've seen jihadis and they are

answerable to no one. They have a lot of experience underis, and they are answerable to no one.

They have a lot of experience under their belt, and they are the ones that everyone believes

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