Atallah al-Salim The Lebanon Daily Star,
Lebanon’s media received poor marks on a newly released report on media in the Arab world, receiving an overall grade of just over 2 out of 4 in the Media Sustainability Index for 2010-11.
Surprisingly, its grade for freedom of speech (1.99) was one of its lowest in six different areas related to the media, although the country is often hailed as an oasis of media freedom compared to other countries in the region.
The rankings were announced during a panel discussion organized Thursday by Maharat Foundation, a local media watchdog, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day.
The index is composed of six "objectives," or areas in which a country receives a numerical grade on a scale of 4: freedom of speech, professional journalism, plurality of news, business management, supporting institutions and serving public needs.
Representatives of media outlets, NGOs, professional associations and academic institutions served as the primary sources of information in drafting the report.
While most of the scores saw slight increases and decreases since 2005, when the process was launched, Lebanon’s score when it comes to "supporting institutions" for the media significantly dipped from 2.34 in 2005, to only 1.64 in 2011.
Even though the report cited several initiatives undertaken by different universities, newspapers and NGOs to launch training programs for journalists, these efforts have largely failed in terms of sustainability, resulting in the low "supporting institutions score."
The report highlighted the inactive role of the Journalists Union, which it said has "closed its doors to working media professionals, failed to hold elections for years, and had done little to defend the rights of journalists."
Other reasons provided by the report were difficulties in the country’s electricity, Internet and infrastructure which negatively affect the performance of media.
The media’s lowest grade (1.28) in "serving public needs," a newly introduced objective in the index.
According to panelists who contributed to the report, media outlets are not undertaking reform or supporting discussions leading to reform; they only wait to see what politicians say in order to identify their reporting angle.