At a time of heightened global attention to the threat of misinformation, disinformation, political propaganda, and the role of technology in facilitating their spread, this research addresses the media ecosystem encompassing the Syrian Civil War. We examine the competing narratives surrounding the role of Syria Civil Defence, a volunteer humanitarian organization popularly known as the White Helmets, working in war-torn Syria. Mainstream media articles sympathetic of the White Helmets and their efforts brought global awareness to the plight of Syrian people, especially those resisting the Assad government. However, this narrative was not aligned with other views of the complex geopolitical landscape of the Syrian conflict, and in response counter-narratives challenging the White Helmets emerged and spread to other online communities. Using a mixed-method approach based on seed data collected from Twitter, and then extending out to the websites cited in that data, we examine content sharing practices within news articles across distinct media domains that functioned to construct, shape, and propagate these narratives. We articulate a predominantly alternative media “echo-system” of websites that repeatedly share content about the White Helmets. Among other findings, our work reveals a small set of websites and authors generating content that is spread across diverse sites, drawing audiences from distinct communities into a shared narrative. This analysis also reveals the integration of government-funded media and geopolitical think tanks as source content for anti-White Helmets narratives. More broadly, the analysis demonstrates the role of alternative newswire-like services in providing content for alternative media websites. Though additional work is needed to understand these patterns over time and across topics, we provide insight into the dynamics of this multi-layered media ecosystem.