• Girl Posting to Twitter From Aleppo Gains Sympathy, but Doubts Follow - The New York Times
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/world/middleeast/aleppo-twitter-girl-syria.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad

    Je ne pensais pas que cela irait aussi vite, et sur le NYT en plus ! (via Angry Arab)

    #syrie #propagande

    Some people have questioned whether the videos in which Bana speaks were rehearsed or altered.

    The inaccessibility of much of the Syria conflict to journalists, who often have no way of confirming the provenance of information directly, has amplified those concerns.

    According to Bana’s mother, who describes herself as a 26-year-old teacher of English and who has spoken with The New York Times via Skype and WhatsApp, the Twitter postings originated in eastern Aleppo, where Fatemah said she lived with Bana and her two younger children, Mohamed, 5, and Noor, 3.

    All appear in photographs and videos posted by the @AlabedBana account. But Bana is the only one who spends significant time on camera or who speaks to the audience in English. She appears in many of the clips to be reading from a card or to have memorized lines.

    Fatemah, who says she taught Bana to speak English, appears to be digitally astute in photographing and recording her daughter. However, a handful of videos on Bana’s account seem to have been filmed by local citizen journalists with better-quality cameras.

    Bana and family members also were shown in a documentary broadcast in France last month about Aleppo, produced by Sept à Huit, a leading French magazine.