Following a March 8 pro-Syrian demonstration in Beirut, Lebanon, organized by the Islamic militant group Hezbollah, media figures downplayed the rally's significance in order to suggest that the Lebanese people uniformly oppose Syrian influence in Lebanon and favor Western-style democracy. In fact, the pro-Syrian demonstration was far larger than recent anti-Syrian rallies, and far from demonstrating unity, the rally offered clear evidence that “Lebanon's political and sectarian fault lines have re-emerged,” as The New York Times wrote.

On the March 8 edition of Fox News' Big Story with John Gibson, chief White House correspondent Carl Cameron falsely reported that while the protest was “huge,” it was “much smaller than any of the anti-Syrian demonstrations that have taken place in recent days.” Later in the same program, host John Gibson similarly downplayed the demonstration's size: "[I]t's a lot of people but isn't a huge number." In fact, The New York Times reported on March 9 that the protest “was far larger than the anti-Syrian demonstrations of recent weeks that have drawn broad international support.” On March 10, the Times described the scene as “one of the biggest demonstrations of recent Lebanese history.”

On the March 8 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Washington Post columnist and associate editor David Ignatius asserted that the protesters were “saying in their own way, 'Goodbye, Syria,' ” and that “all Lebanese, across confessional lines, want change. They want the Syrians out.”

But contrary to Ignatius's claim that all Lebanese want the Syrians to withdraw, the Los Angeles Times reported on March 9 that the demonstration's “crowds left no doubt that Lebanon is a nation divided over the role of Syria -- and that the split had exacerbated some of the sectarian fault lines that in 1975 pitched the country into a 15-year civil war.” Other news sources provided similar accounts. Beyond The New York Times' reference to “political and sectarian fault lines,” The Washington Post noted the same day that “The demonstration exposed the deep and potentially dangerous divide that has opened up in the weeks since the Feb. 14 assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.”

Other evidence also refutes Ignatius's claim that opposition to Syria exists “across confessional lines” in Lebanon. The Los Angeles Times reported: “Analysts say that many Shiites remain loyal to Syria and are wary of an opposition-led government that might emerge after a military withdrawal.” Shiites make up about half of Lebanon's population. And the Post noted that while “Lebanon's Shiite plurality had remained largely on the sidelines” during the anti-Syria protests, at the pro-Syrian demonstration “the crowd appeared to consist mostly of followers of Hezbollah and Amal, the second-largest Shiite party.” Similarly, the March 9 New York Times article documented that both class and religion are factors in Lebanon's political divide:

The participants at the [pro-Syrian] demonstration here represented, by and large, a very different Lebanon from the educated, better-off Christians, Druse and Sunni Muslims who have captured the world's attention since Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister, was assassinated Feb. 14 by a huge car bomb. While the anti-Syrian opposition movement has been called the Cedar Revolution, a reference to the Lebanese national tree, it has also been called the BMW revolution. The demonstration included far more women with covered heads and many men in traditional dress.

While Ignatius emphasized in his television appearance that the protesters waved Lebanese flags, he neglected to mention that “the sea of people also raised photos of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud, an ally of Syria,” as The New York Times reported. The Los Angeles Times noted the significant influence of Hezbollah, which organized the demonstration: “Hezbollah won widespread popular support after its militia took credit for driving the Israeli army from Lebanon in 2000. ... [The group] sponsors a broad network of hospitals, orphanages, schools and recreational centers. The group even maintains its own satellite television station.”

Though the rally clearly contained many Lebanese protesters, several media outlets have accurately noted that some of the pro-Syrian demonstrators may actually have been from Syria, not Lebanon. After noting “the affinity many southern Lebanese Shiites feel for Syria” and that many protesters “had been trucked in from southern Lebanon” in a March 9 report, The Washington Times suggested that “many of the participants were Syrians” by noting Lebanon's guest worker program: “With an estimated 500,000 guest workers in a country of about 4 million people, the Syrians have a large cultural presence in Lebanon and in the past have been cajoled, ordered or bribed into participating in 'Lebanese' shows of support for Syria.” On March 10, Columbia Journalism Review's CJR Daily stated that “between 500,000 and 1 million Syrian guest workers...are pretty likely to show up at a rally in support of Syria.” But The Australian, a national daily newspaper based in New South Wales, while acknowledging that “Some of the demonstrators were drawn from the Syrian guest worker contingent inside Lebanon,” described the “core of the demonstration” as “homegrown -- Lebanese Shia supporters of Hezbollah, Shia clerics in their white turbans, locals from the Shia districts in Beirut's impoverished southern suburbs, where Hezbollah flags fly from every lamp-post.”

Even some conservatives have conceded that strong pro-Syrian sentiment exists in Lebanon, despite the commentators' support for the Bush administration's hard-line position against the Syrian government. Though he asserted that it is not the “majority of the population,” on the March 8 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, syndicated Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer recognized that Hezbollah “does have broad support among the Shia population. Because like Hamas, which is also a terrorist group in Gaza, for example, it has social services. So it has a lot of people who like it.” While attacking United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan for expressing willingness to negotiate with Hezbollah, National Review editor Rich Lowry declared on the March 9 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes that the rally was not “just against foreign influence in Lebanon... It was a protest in favor of Syrian occupation of Lebanon.”