Reporting on rebels that are approved by the US

I read this piece by Shadid on Hamah.  I, of course, trust Shadid's reporting even if I disagree with him here and there.  It is a first entry into the city by a Western reporter.  I trust the accuracy of his reporting but I thought of this:  how difficult it is for a Western reporter to write unfavorably about a movement that is approved by the US?  How tolerant would foreign editors be if reporters cover negative aspects of movements that are approved by US/Israel?  I ask this because we have seen a pattern.  It took Human Rights Watch (and the Economist in passing) to write about atrocities, racism, and potential war crimes by NATO rebels in Libya.  Look at the way the Western press covered Lebanon during the Potato Revolution: in fact, Anthony Shadid at the Post at the time and Megan Stack at the LA times were rare examples of correspondents who were not swept by the frenzied, unprofessional, and fawning coverage of the Hariri "rebels" in Lebanon.  I say this because the Islamism is a major facet of the movement in Hamah, and that should not be covered up.  Shadid mentioned it in passing:  " Islamists populate and perhaps dominate the ranks of protesters, and by some estimates, a fourth of the city has fled, fearing a showdown more than the brand of rule the Islamists might impose."  Of course, Shadid does not know for sure why people fled unless he interviews them and it is not unthinkable that some local Christians may have indeed fled out of fear of the Islamist promises.  This of course, as comrade Sinan pointed out in Jadaliyyah a few days ago in his critique of Adonis, should not lead us to equate regime and opposition.  The regime is the guilty party here and it --as the official authority in the land--is responsible for all the killing and murders that take place in Syria.  We can warn about certain trends in some sections (by no means all) of the opposition in Syria.   I and my leftist comrades in the late 70s (at high school and later at AUB) were supportive of the revolution against the Shah but despised Khumayni and warned against any alliance with his lousy Islamist movement and we criticized those leftists (like Adonis and Anouar Abdul-Malek and Samir Amin) who supported the Islamist Revolution in Iran.  For those of us who champion the cause of the Syrian people and its freedom, we are obligated to speak out against the intolerance and intimidating trends represented by some section of the opposition, namely the Muslim Brotherhood and the liberal Syrians who write in the mouthpieces of House of Saud and House of Hariri).  The vicious, sexist, vulgar and nasty attacks leveled against the Lebanese journalist, Ghadi Francis, simply because she snuck into Hamah and wrote about her observations and she used the term "Qandahar" to refer to what some local described about Islamist trends.  Whether you like the term or not, the campaign by the "liberal" opposition against Francis and her characterization as "agent of the regime" (although she was later expelled from Syria by the same regime) point out to Ba`thist  tactics and methods adopted by some in the opposition.  We are obligated to support the overthrow of the regime but we are not obligated to support whatever comes after its downfall.