What she did when she was in Syria was:
She wrote a blog for the BBC website, which I followed avidly
Because I was going there. And I was, originally, quite disappointed
that she'd got there before me
but actually, on reflection, I really loved it because I could then compare
my time in Syria with her time in Syria.
So she talks about how she had gone into 'neighbouring Beirut'.
which is a phrase I will come back to.
And then - she took a Panasonic camera with her with cassettes.
And she goes into Beirut and she does all this filming
of all this kind of historic, Beirut, Middle East stuff.
Her guise as she was going into Syria was that
she was going in there as a Byzantine research student.
so that she would not get stopped.
I went in as a tourist.
I had a three month visa.
I wandered around all over the place. I had a great time.
This poor woman is put in this tiny, tiny room
with a lumpy mattress and crap-all in the fridge.
I flew..... I flew from London to Vienna
I had a nice, little stop-over in Vienna
and then I flew into Damascus.
came out of the airport with my little, wheelie suitcase.
I stayed at a lovely two-star hotel, which, believe me, in Syria is nice!
We had air-conditioning unlike in this room now.
We had wi-fi. I had really good wi-fi.
I had a mini-bar.
She had a barren fridge. I had a mini-bar.
I had a lovely double bed. She had this lumpy mattress.
She, by the way, is a journalist who had been around for twenty years.
This is in 2011. I also went back in 2012.
You have to remember that this is right in the middle of the 'Arab Spring'.
I don't want to dwell too much on it because she's actually got leukemia now, which is very, very sad
and I really hope that she gets well, but
being the first BBC journalist to go in there
she kind of set the tone
and I think it's worth looking at some of the remarks that she made on her website.
and her blog about being in Syria.
So she says that it was impossible to go out and record in the street.
I'm going to show you some photographs that I took which completely dispell that.
No foreign journalists were allowed to go into Syria. That's not true.
As I say, CNN were in there. German and Russian TV - they were in there all the time.
And no foreign tourists were there, either.
I was proof, myself, physically, in person, I was able to prove her wrong.
And then she says - and I think this is a really key section. She then says...
But they still represented the opposition.
She didn't get a good cross-view of views of different people of different backgrounds
She just just went for those who were against the government.
And then she was there five days.
She actually went for one Friday.
Friday is always the day of protest.
If there is going to be any protest, it's always going to be on a Friday, because that's the day of prayers.
She was there for one. I was there for a minimum of three.
And she recorded this one and she called them 'Protest Fridays'.
and she makes this comment that people go out on these protest marches
and don't even know if they are going to come back.
It's a load of bollocks, it really is.
It's incredibly untrue.
I did some podcasting. They are on my website.
and I actually interviewed and filmed people.
On 'Protest Fridays', I went out looking for protest marches, so that I could film them
on the Friday and put them up there.
And all of the podcasts that I did of my 'Protest Fridays'
They are all on my website and you can see exactly what I did.