Anne Barnard documents: on Syria again

Look how reporting moves from anecdotes to generalizations about the larger communities (a course in statistics and sampling would have helped):  "Some members of the constituencies Mr. Assad counts on — Sunni Muslim business elites, the Christian minority, state employees and ambitious young urbanites — said last week in Syria that they had lost faith in the government and no longer believed its claims of victory."  I mean, you can take "some members" of the African-American community who admire George W. Bush.  Can you generalize from that?