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From Our Own Correspondent: Syria and Sicily

Syria and Sicily

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Syria and Sicily

Owen Bennett Jones with personal stories and reflection from Lyse Doucet and Dany Mitzman

Owen Bennett Jones presents despatches from Lyse Doucet, with the people "afraid even to say they're afraid" in Syria, and Dany Mitzman, meeting the anti-Mafia broadcasters of Telejato TV in Partinico

Owen Bennett Jones introduces personal stories, wit and analysis from correspondents around the world. In this edition, Lyse Doucet gets a rare glimpse of public opinion in Syria, while Dany Mitzman meets a the staff of a tiny TV station defying the Mafia in Sicily.

"Afraid even to say they're afraid"

Covering the anti-government protests in Syria over the last seven months hasn't been easy. Some correspondents have been trying to do it from Beirut, not by choice but because the Syrian government would not issue them visas. Many have relied on email, social media, skype, satellite phones, talking to refugees and, of course, getting the official version from the government news agency and Syrian state TV. 

It's not that the Syrian officials are given to saying no - more that they almost never say yes. Well at last they did, and Lyce Doucet got a visa, enabling her to ask the Syrian street directly what's going on.

Watching them watching us watching them

From the Godfather films at the cinema to the Sopranos on TV, the Mafia has been a rich seam of inspiration for directors. All too many have glamourized the gangsters; others have shown their brutality, and some have even dared made a joke of them. But it's a different matter when the people depicting organised crime also have to live and work in close physical proximity to the very figures they're portraying.

As Dany Mitzman has been discovering, few people have opposed the mafiosi with as much dedication and plain courage as the chain-smoking Pino Maniaci, of tiny local TV station Telejato.

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