Covering Syria

So I turned on the news on the news station of King Fahd's brother-in-law,Al-Arabiyya: which in comparison to Aljazeera is now considered less vulgar and less crude and less sensational, as sensational, crude, and vulgar it is.  So they spoke to one of their witnesses in Syria.  He clearly struggled hard to try to provide reports of massive protests and killings by the lousy regime but clearly could not give them what they would like every Friday.  (Aljazeera and Al-Arabiyya stick to the propaganda principle that no Friday can be reported as if it was less active than previous Fridays).  So the man did not have much to report so he started reporting things from the past.  The anchorwoman was confused: so she asked him delicately, are you reporting about things that happened today or in the past?  So he said, that no, he is reporting about things that happened today, and in the past.  He wanted to explain why protests were not big today so he blurted this: they surrounded all mosques today.  But if this would do the job for the regime, why did they not do that before?