DAMASCUS — Ghada Hassan, a veteran reporter at the state-owned daily Al-Thawra, was summoned in early February, along with scores of fellow employees, for what many expected to be a brutal grilling by the new leadership of the paper, which took over following the toppling of the Assad regime. “I wore a long jacket to cover my thighs and a hat to cover my head. These people were conservative and I am an Alawite,” she recalled, grinning wryly during an interview with Al-Monitor. 

Nour al-Din al-Ismail, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, which was founded in 1963 and for decades spewed turgid propaganda glorifying the Assad family, has vivid memories of those first encounters. “The staff were obviously nervous and scared. Eighty five percent of them you know were from, well, from a certain group: Alawites,” he told Al-Monitor during an interview at Al-Thawra’s main office in Damascus. “Many were women. They were afraid of revenge” because ousted strongman Bashar al-Assad was an Alawite who oversaw the brutal suppression of the country’s Sunni majority, much like his father and predecessor, Hafez, did. 

One of the journalists, fearful because Ismail was from Idlib, "would recite verses from the Koran each time he addressed me," Ismail added.

Their worries proved unfounded. “I told them, 'We are turning a new page. We don’t care what you believe in or what your religion is. Hard work will be rewarded.’ We did not fire a single person," Ismail said.