A top F1 journalist has hit back at the international media for misrepresenting the reality of the situation on the ground in Bahrain.

Referring to a report by a "supposedly respectable international news agency", which claimed dozens of armoured vehicles had been deployed on the roads leading to the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC), Joe Saward said the article was simply untrue.

"It is a small reflection on the kind of reporting that is going on concerning the Grand Prix, but it should be noted nonetheless," he said on his blog (joesaward.wordpress.com/). "As I have written in reply to a number of comments. It is eye-opening to see what is being reported because it bears no resemblance to what we are seeing.”

"Admittedly, we are not going to hotspots, but we feel that the coverage is completely unrepresentative of the situation. One can see that the media is not giving the regime the benefit of the doubt, which is not surprising given what happened last year.

"They have a huge job to do to rebuild confidence in anything they say, but at the same time it means there is no counter-balance to the activists one sees being interviewed on the TV.

"No one is going out and interviewing the hundreds of thousands of people who are going about their daily business and to whom nothing is happening."

Saward said the best analogy he could think of was that a TV crew would always film where the water was deepest in a flood.

"It is the same here. No-one is denying that there is trouble, but this is not a war zone and it is shameful that this is the message being sent out to the world," he said. "It makes me wonder how I will read the news about other countries in the future..."

Saward writes primarily about motor sport and concentrates specifically on the FIA Formula 1 World Championship and has reportedly attended every race since 1988. – TradeArabia News Service