Add developments in Lebanon to the growing list of examples that the desire for freedom is spreading in the Middle East. You wouldn’t know it, Paul Chesser wrote in a CJ commentary, if you relied on the Washington Post, the New York Times, or USA Today to report it. Only the Washington Times put the story on Page 1 and acknowledged the significance of the huge protest in Beirut, urging Syria to withdraw from the country following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Chesser proffered that political correctness had trumped journalism. To his surprise, he heard from the Middle-East reporter who wrote the Times story. Mitchell Prothero saw Chesser’s piece and disagreed with its conclusion. Prothero wrote that the other papers have limited space for Middle East coverage and that topics such as Israel and Iraq had taken it. “I do think the media was caught with its pants down, but doubt the lack of coverage was political…..editors I pitched to were just so preoccupied with other stories…..and not many folks keep staff in beirut, or like me, journos here end up in iraq or wherever most of the time….”