ARCHIVES: Lebanon
Reporters Without Borders has expressed concern over recent verdicts against journalists and media organisations by the country’s publications court. The court was established to settle disputes over defamation and libel cases. The press freedom organisation called for comprehensive reform of all laws concerning the practice of journalism in Lebanon. Currently, the press law (adopted in 1962, amended in 1977, 1994 and 1999), covers print media only. Journalists working for broadcast and digital... MORE
Responding to restrictions and attacks on its staff, Al-Jazeera has suspended its operations inside Syria indefinitely, the Qatar-based news network told the Committee to Protect Journalists today. Damascus has subjected Syrian employees of Al-Jazeera to sustained pressure to resign from the widely viewed satellite news channel, the station's Public Liberties and Human Rights Section told CPJ today. Authorities have also prevented the channel's correspondents, among others, from entering the... MORE
A correspondent for the Lebanese New TV television station, Ibrahim Dsoki , has received death threats and insults directed at him personally, as well as at his family and work colleagues, from student union members and supporters of the Amal movement (a Lebanese Shi'a political movement founded by Musa al-Sadr). The threats arrived via Dsoki's private email account and on the website of the television station on March 9, after the journalist wrote an opinion piece on his private Facebook page... MORE
Targeted physical attacks were carried out Tuesday on journalists in several Lebanese cities including Beirut, the northern city of Tripoli and the southern city of Sidon, during violent protests that followed the announcement that a Hezbollah-backed candidate has been appointed prime minister, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The press freedom organisation urged Lebanon’s politicians to appeal for calm and to ask their supporters to respect the... MORE
The Lebanese news website Al-Akhbar is being harassed after it published US diplomatic cables that were first disclosed by WikiLeaks. The website was hacked last week by unknown attackers, while the Tunisian government blocked domestic access to the site. Saudi officials blocked access to the independent website Elaph, which also published some of the cables. "We condemn efforts to restrict news coverage of the diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks," said Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ... MORE
The Lebanese army intelligence department detained journalist Hassan Alleik, a reporter for the Al-Akhbar newspaper, and questioned him for six hours on August 11 about an article published in the newspaper the previous day, according to press freedom group Maharat Foundatin. The article was about the escape of an agent named Ghassan El Jed, who was previously accused by Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah of being involved in the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. “Alleik’s... MORE
A journalist of Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper was killed in clashes between the Israeli and Lebanese armies which erupted Tuesday, shattering several years of relative calm on the tense Israel-Lebanon border. The Lebanese news site NOW Lebanon named the journalist as Assaf Abu Rahal, according to the International Press Institute (IPI). Arab news reports also said Ali Chouayb, a journalist working for the Lebanese TV outlet Al-Manar – closely affiliated with the militant Lebanese Hezbollah... MORE
The UN Security Council has established an international criminal tribunal empowered to prosecute individuals responsible for a series of deadly attacks against Lebanese journalists in 2005. The Security Council approved resolution 1757 on May 30, establishing an international criminal tribunal to prosecute the masterminds of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, who was killed along with 22 others in a Beirut bombing in February 2005. The resolution indicates... MORE
In retrospect, it should have been a given that Hizbullah would be capable of claiming “media superiority” and strength following the last war between Israel and Lebanon. However, various media sources were forced to jump at every opportunity to get information regarding Hizbullah leaders and the group’s political stand, after extended periods of silence on the part of Hassan Nasrallah and Hizbullah spokespersons for security reasons. Hizbullah, though, claims it managed to make it through the... MORE
BEIRUT: It's been said that the vibrancy of a city's media culture is a good indication of that city's quality of life. A metropolis with a lot of magazines is a metropolis with a lot going on. If one were to survey the newsstands in Beirut earlier this summer, one would have been impressed with the number of new and established titles on display - a spate of fashion rags, business journals and lifestyle publications, all tailored to the Lebanese capital and reflective of its energy and... MORE
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