I just came across a great example of how taxing it is to parse some of this rubbish, so here it is.
https://www.thenation.com/article/saudi-lobbying-complex-adds-new-member-gop-super-pac-chair-norm-coleman/
As this article from The Nation in late 2014 reports, this Twitter account https://twitter.com/syrcoalition @SyrCoalition billing itself as the "official account of the Syrian Opposition" is run by a PR firm employed by the Saudis.
In addition to Hogan Lovells, the Saudi government counts several other firms, including Squire Patton Boggs and Qorvis-MSLGROUP, as part of its lobbying operation. As Al-Monitor reported, the Saudi kingdom’s relationship with “Qorvis dates back to 2001, when then-Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan inked a $3.2 million deal for an image makeover after ‘favorability toward Saudi Arabia…declined significantly’ among ‘Washington insiders’ in the wake of the terror attacks.”
Qorvis-MSLGROUP’s latest disclosure reveals that the firm has suggested story ideas to The Weekly Standard and NPR, and pitched other interviews on behalf of the Saudi government. The disclosure also shows that the Saudi Embassy, through Qorvis-MSLGROUP, manages the Twitter account @SyrCoalition, which is touted as the “official” voice of the Syrian opposition to Bashar al-Assad.
However, The Nation is frequently cited by opposing outlets as a propaganda vehicle, as happened for example in this recent piece:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/13/how-putin-played-the-far-left.html
The Nation’s coverage of Russian affairs is a national embarrassment. RT is a website that hosts neo-Nazis as "expert" commentators. Yet that does not stop The Nation from publishing whataboutist articles in defense of the propaganda channel; articles pushing the same argument, with the exact same headlines, as those found in white-nationalist publications.
The Nation’s crop of Russia watchers have lately busied themselves by lending credence to the "autonomy referendums" in eastern Ukraine, thus legitimizing illegal and neo-imperialist land-grabs, or notions that the entire Ukrainian crisis was "instigated by the West’s attempt… to smuggle [Ukraine] into NATO."
But of course RT and others frequently make similar extreme claims about The Daily Beast being a propaganda outlet via the work of Michael Weiss.
Taking a step back from these daily opinion venues publishing so much of this incendiary material, you end up with problems like that of the mainstream coverage of the "liberation" (or "massacre" depending on your news organisation) of East Aleppo. On the one hand, you had a large number of major news outlets promising a civilian bloodbath throughout December 2016, complete with gleeful reporting when several hundred civilian deaths were reported, but then total silence when the promised carnage seemed to stop almost entirely. On the other you got montages of Russian soldiers giving food to starving children.
That the proxy conflict taking place across the borders of Syria is routinely reported as a "civil war" is just as deceptive.
The question of longer term strategic preference—for example whether it's actually a good idea for the Syrian people and the peoples of neighbouring countries for there to be regime change in Syria, and why—is almost never honestly treated by any outlet, and rarely thought about seriously by readers of news either.
Now add on to that the charities, NGOs, intelligence agencies and foreign ministries that are in many cases compromised and unreliable narrators. It is often unclear how to get at the truth and thereby, a confident opinion about what should be done.
