Good morning, Damascus: Outrage over reporter's flippant tweet

A deluge of fury followed after the above tweet was posted by The New York Times' reporter Anne Bernard from Damascus on Thursday.

Bernard, along with a number of other Western reporters had attended a controversial conference earlier this week in Syria's capital before a rare meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Minutes later the Beirut-based reporter was inundated with questions and outrage for the casual and almost flippant reference to the Syrian president.

Replies included pictures of Syrian children surrounded by rubble to remind Bernard of the Syria not seen from within the walls of Assad's palace.

Bernard quickly deleted her message, explaining in a series of tweets on Friday that she had been misunderstood as her initial tweet was supposed to be "ironic."

The New York Times' reporter defended her participation in the Damascus conference however, and after her meeting with Assad published an article entitled "Assad in person: confident, friendly, no regrets."

The conference – held between 30-31 October – was organised by the London-based British Syrian Society, headed by Assad's father-in-law Fawaz Ahkras, and included at least four Syrian regime officials currently sanctioned over their role in Assad's war crimes.

Bernard claims she only attended the conference to finally make her way into Syria after being unable to obtain a visa for more than two years.

A host of other journalists from Western news outlets including The Washington Post, The New Yorker and Britain's The Sunday Times attended the event on Sunday and Monday.

Critics however slammed the conference as a Syrian regime PR exercise and castigated its attendees for giving it traction.