Coverage of Syria

I woke up this morning bracing myself--like every Friday--to hear about the death toll in Syria: about another round of victims of regime gunfire.  But the coverage is still more deficient: there is propaganda on Syria, there is no media coverage.  Professionalism is out of the window as all sides try to push a propaganda agenda. What do you do when you wake up to see Cicero of Syria speaking from Geneva about Syria?  So many questions are not answered in my mind: why have there been no defections in the regime? Not in the diplomatic corps (where it is easier to defect) and nor in the government service back home?  Why has the Syrian army and intelligence remain largely unified?  I don't claim to know the answers but I am genuinely looking for answers.  And why has Damascus and Aleppo not joined in the protests?  The other day I read in the New York Times (or the Economist--can someone find me the exact silly quote), that the reason why protests have not spread to Damascus and Aleppo is because the regime goons break them up.  Come on.  And there are no regime goons in Hamah and Homs and Dir`a and Dayr Az-Zor (I write Dayr Az-Zur as Az-Zor, which is against the standard transliteration because the Syrian people pronounce it using a non-Arabic sounding vowel).