One can't help but laugh out really loud when watching the coverage by some official Arab satellite channels of the revolutions taking place in many Arab republics. The coverage looks and sounds surrealistically bizarre. With their cheap and badly concocted reports, these news channels strike you as being masters of hocus pocus rather than professional media.
It seems that the ruling regimes in the Arab republics beset by popular uprisings have decided to completely adopt the Goebbelsian propaganda theory verbatim in their media handling of the local intifadas. They have nothing to offer to their audiences, but a pack of absurd lies in order to mar the glorious face of the revolutions.
What concerns republican Arab media most is how to play down what is going on in the streets. That is why they go a long way to show us footage of very quiet roads, streets, places and public squares where people are going about their daily business in a very normal way.
The local television went even further in a certain republic when it focused its cameras on the riverbank where people were sitting and chatting in a very romantic manner, when, in actual fact, millions of people were elsewhere shouting slogans and calling for the toppling of the regime.
Similarly, another local TV station in another republic was so eager to tell its viewers that its cities were not as troubled as they were reported to be by "prejudiced, conspiring foreign satellite channels", but very quiet, if not serene.
Funnily enough, somebody believed what he heard on the local TV channel and headed straight for a city reported to be protest-free. When he arrived on the outskirts of the city he was stopped by police and army officers who asked him what the hell he was doing there. He told them that a certain TV channel had broadcast a report saying it was very quiet here. They replied: "You and that stupid channel can go to hell. Can't you see that we are almost in a state of war with the locals?"
I am also sure that many people laughed a lot when an analyst told them on the same Goebbelsian channel that nobody would take part in demonstrations on the weekend, and that people will go on picnics to enjoy drinking tea and smoking hubble-bubble.
Instead, people went out in the thousands to call for regime change and dubbed the national media a bunch of liars.
Meanwhile, the local TV stations went on showing their viewers footage of people buying lettuce and parsley in the local markets. And when they were obliged to say something about the hundreds of people gathering not far away, the official channels said that they went out to thank God for the rain which was falling all over the city.
The second favourite theme for the official media in the troubled Arab republics these days is smearing the reputation of groups organising the demonstrations and the people taking part in them.
A certain channel was audacious enough to call the thousands of youth participating in the huge gatherings as a group of mercenaries who take part in the demonstrations for a Kentucky Fried Chicken meal and a dollar each.
In another republic, the official media branded the people demonstrating against the regime as a bunch of infiltrators or armed bands funded and directed by evil foreign forces. That is why, the same media justified the military invasion of the troubled areas as a response to local pleas to rid the residents of arsonists and terrorists, which is, of course, a big lie, as the locals insist.
We later saw how tanks and armoured vehicles destroyed mosques and buildings, and how they killed scores of innocent civilians in the same area that they were reported to have come to rid of trouble-makers. And to add salt to the wounds, the same TV station told the viewers a very absurd tale about how criminal snipers who shot scores of civilians dead managed to climb the roof of a local prison, and started shooting at passersby — as if the prison is a canteen or a public restaurant that anybody can enter any time.
It is well-known that the snipers belonged to the security services. And when a reliable foreign channel reports a horrible massacre committed by the death squads affiliated with the security apparatus, the local televisions deny them straight away as fabrications, or as something which has taken place in another country.
What strikes you most, and almost makes you sort of sick is when those same Goebbelsian official channels start questioning the professionalism of highly reliable TV stations renowned globally. They funnily enough call the respectable stations suspicious and mendacious.
It is no wonder that a respected journalist likened these official satellite channels to a prostitute lecturing people about chastity and rectitude.
Dr Faisal Al Qasim is a Syrian journalist based in Doha.