Ignorance and prejudice in the New York Times

I don't know who this guy is, and I have never heard of his name, but I can easily tell that he knows no Arabic whatsoever.  The Syrian people live under a repressive regime and yet they show tremendous courage and defiance and innovation in the face of censorship and repression.  Days ago I was talking to a guy who stopped me near Bab Tuma in downtown Damascus: and he was complaining about censorship and how arbitrary it seems.  He told me that Al-Akhbar is sold in Syria but is regularly banned on Saturdays, when my article appears.   1) I don't mind that the article talks about repression in Syria but the paper ignores repression--worse repression--in pro-US regimes, like Saudi Arabia or Libya; 2) the article does not give credit to the Syrian people in how they defy the regime; 3) look at this passage:  "I had seen what he meant just the previous night, wandering past a cafe where dozens of Syrians had gathered outdoors as usual to watch, on a big screen, “Bab al-Hara,” a hugely popular soap opera across the Arab world about life in Damascus at the turn of the last century. In it women gossip, men shoot guns and shout at one another. It’s what passes for popular culture — not worse than what passes for it in Rome or Red Hook, maybe, except that for Syrians the alternatives are few."  That was what really irked me.  This guy knows no Arabic and sat down to watch people watch a program and wrote this.  I happen to have seen all episodes of this season's Bab Al-Harah and wrote a critique of the show, but this lousy and silly description does not do justice to the show and its actors and actresses.  Another moment of shame, prejudice, and ignorance at the New York Times.  When it comes to covering Arabs and Muslims, they don't disappiont--the classical bigots and racists, that is.