BEIRUT: As foreign journalists weigh the risks of reporting on the unrest in Syria, many nameless locals are putting themselves in greater danger for fewer rewards – to cover an uprising in a tightly controlled police state that often literally shoots the messenger.

“Syrian journalists are targeted now, that's why we witnessed the birth of citizen journalists who are doing excellent work. We know it but unfortunately the world doesn't,” says Razan Ghazzawi, a popular blogger who was detained in December but released days later, thanks to media campaigns drawing attention to her situation and possibly the fact that she has a U.S. passport.

“I think it’s rare that Western journalists care about our cause. They need interesting stories. Stories of torture and the like might be repetitive and boring at times,” Ghazzawi tells The Daily Star.

Though she is grateful for the publicity that helped secure her release, Ghazzawi resents the fact that those of her Syrian colleagues with a lower profile are forced to suffer.

“I receive many requests from foreign journalists to share my experience while I was in detention. I get that my campaign was big and all, and sharing my experience might be useful. But precisely because I got a big campaign, they treated me ‘right’ in comparison to my friends, many of whom were tortured,” she says.

Since the beginning of Syria’s uprising, which began in March 2011, local activists have played a critical role in covering events in their country – often in places that are too difficult or dangerous for foreigners to reach. Thanks to “citizen journalists” who place themselves at risk by attending demonstrations – even more so by carrying a camera – the world has been able to learn about protests and human rights abuses in Homs, Hama, Daraa and elsewhere.

“It’s very dangerous to cover a protest. You could end up dead. Anyone at a protest [risks getting] shot. If they’re caught with a camera, then they’re charged as a spy,” says Shakeeb al-Jabri, a Syrian activist based in Lebanon who has been instrumental in organizing media coverage of the events in his home country.

“The regime is afraid and knows these days are different,” says Kinda Kanbar, a Syrian freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C., who previously worked as a publisher in Damascus.

“Instead of having three or five journalists criticizing, there are now hundreds. The smartphone is more dangerous than Israel to them now.” (In December, Syria banned the iPhone, saying it was detrimental to the country’s stability.)

Syria’s growing networks of citizen journalists have learned, by necessity, to employ a variety of creative means to evade the radar of the vigilant authorities. When carrying out their daily work of media coverage, they rely heavily on internet proxies, satellite phones and modems and hidden cameras – often placed in buttons, pens and wristwatches.

However, some have learned the hard way that the sneakier they are, the greater the punishment.

“One of our [citizen] journalists was caught with a wristwatch camera near Damascus. They said: it’s foreign technology, you must be a spy. He was held for four months in detention, where he was tortured,” Jabri says.

A report released last week by Paris-based media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks Syria 176th in the world in terms of media freedom, a drop from last year's already dismal ranking of 173rd out of 179. When it comes to freedom of the media, Syria is now the worst country in the Middle East, ranking just below Iran. And internationally, it fares better than only Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, described by the report as “absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties.”

“The situation in Syria had an impact on neighboring Lebanon, where the government provided the Syrian authorities with a degree of cooperation in their attempts to track down dissident Syrian journalists and bloggers who had fled to Lebanon,” reads the report.

On the other hand, Arab countries that underwent political change rose on the index, with Tunisia jumping 30 points from 164th place to 134th, while Libya’s ranking rose from 160th to 154th.

So far, three Syrian media workers have been killed since their country’s revolt began. Cameraman Ferzat Jarban was shot dead in Homs on Nov. 20, as was prolific citizen journalist Basil al-Sayed on Dec. 29. On Jan. 2, veteran journalist Shukri Ahmed Ratib Abu Burghul died in a Damascus hospital of wounds he sustained from being shot in the head on Dec. 30 upon arriving at his home in the Damascus suburb of Darya after hosting his weekly program on Radio Damascus.

RSF currently lists 12 journalists and bloggers -- 11 Syrians and one Palestinian -- as detained or missing, noting that the number is almost certainly incomplete.

“Syria is the country that worries us most at the moment,” RSF secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said in a May report. “No one knows what is going on there. How many of the demonstrators have been killed? How many have been wounded? No one knows because journalists are being prevented from working. Foreign reporters cannot get visas to go there and local journalists are all being jailed or forced to remain silent.”

In a report issued in November, Reporters Without Borders urged foreign journalists to take utmost care in protecting local sources. The non-governmental organization noted: “If a foreign reporter is arrested in Syria, he faces a few days in detention and then deportation. But Syrians pay a much higher price for their involvement.”

Nonetheless, some foreign journalists have also paid a high price for covering Syria’s uprising. On Jan. 10, French cameraman Gilles Jacquier was killed by grenades hurled by unknown assailants during a government sponsored trip to cover unrest in Homs. Many other Western journalists have been detained and subsequently released – usually following media campaigns publicizing their plight.

But when Syrians journalists – who are often less experienced than their foreign counterparts and lack support networks – are caught covering their country's unrest, they tend to suffer a fate far worse and largely unrecognized.

Ghazzawi recalls a recent conversation over coffee with a friend, who informed her of a man with a gunshot wound who was deprived of medical care while in detention.

“I don’t know this detainee, but listening to this story, this true story, makes me angry, [particularly the fact] that journalists don’t want to know about ‘detention’ in Syria, but about those VIP detainees, American-Syrians and I don’t know who,” she says.

“I hope you understand my frustration. I was not tortured, I did not have a bullet in my leg, but journalists are more interested in someone like me, than in detention cases of torture which would [convey] the real image of this regime.”

Indeed, the anonymity of Syrian activists appears to be a double-edged sword – protecting them from capture as they work under the veil of a pseudonym, while putting them at much greater risk of violence once caught.

“The activists I was in touch with via different social media platforms change all the time,” says London-based documentary filmmaker and journalist Dana Kahil Trometer, a Lebanese who spent six months covering the Syrian uprising from Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

“I do not know their real identities. And even if I knew and maybe managed to get into Syria, I [would] not want to jeopardize my or their lives since they have been doing all the work on the ground, archiving and writing their own modern history.”