Being uninformed on Syria

As I have said all along, I really don't know what is happening in Syria except that there is a regional-international war in Syria and that the lousy regime and the lousy armed gangs are committing massacres.  But reading Western media for the last year or more is an exercise in stupidity.  I was reading the new Economist yesterday (and the Economist on Syria is not different from Fox News) and thought: the coverage is the same, week after week: the regime is cracking, the opposition is really now being reunited, and that there is a new military council in Syria, and that there is a difference between the Jihadi groups and the moderate Islamist gangs, and that the recent defection in the regime is really a game changer, and that it is now all over for Bashshar, etc.  I mean, do you know how dumb--and HOW WRONG--the Western media coverage has been?