By Habib Battah

 

Average Daily Viewership Share in Lebanon

LBC 38.4%
Jadeed: 35 %
MTV 28.7%
OTV 25.4%
Future 16.7%
NBN 12.3%
Manar 12%
TL: 11.6%
Future News: 10.9%


*Source: IPSOS STAT Beirut

 The television drama unfolding across the Middle East has gripped Lebanese audiences the same as any Arab country. But while the images of upheaval broadcast over the last year have ignited a fury that has gone viral, ejecting viewers off the couch and onto the streets in one city after another, Lebanon remains relatively quiet, seemingly immune from the contagion of revolution. As the walls of fear crumble around them, the country’s decades-old leaders are as entrenched as they have ever been. One major reason why change has so far eluded Lebanon can be attributed to the nascent, if not enabling role played by the country’s news media or lack thereof.  

While Beirut is often lauded for having the freest and most vibrant television landscape in the region, the reality is that most Lebanese stations produce very little journalism. And ironically, the Lebanese are spoiled for choice with a whopping eight local TV news organizations–roughly the equivalent number of stations serving Los Angeles, which is more than double Lebanon’s population. It’s not that Lebanese channels face the kind of government interference present in most Arab states, where networks of stations are state-owned, and thus limited to a monolithic regurgitation of platitudes. In fact, Lebanon’s sole government-held broadcaster is woefully unpopular and the privately-owned stations convey such diametrically opposed views of reality that even the concept of breaking news is disputed. Major political speeches, visits by foreign heads of state and even explosions are carried live by some and dismissed as unimportant by others who may refuse to interrupt a regular programming slot of cartoons or soap operas.

Neither are local stations particularly friendly to authority. Local channels parody and vilify Lebanese leaders with abandon, even adding music and special effects. Everyone has a laugh and yet little changes. Of course viewers know that most Lebanese ‘news’ channels openly function as audiovisual instruments of the political machines that sponsor them: Al Manar is Hezbollah’s “beacon” of resistance, Orange TV proudly doses itself in the colors of former general Michel Aoun’s orange movement and Future News is little more than a communications wing of Saad Hariri’s Future movement. Yet despite its newly refurbished multi-million dollar glass studios, encapsulated in futuristic corten steel panels, it is now the most unpopular channel in Lebanon according to figures obtained by Ipsos. At a 10.9 percent average daily viewership, Future News trails closely behind state broadcaster Tele Liban at 11.6 percent and Al Manar at 12 percent. Perhaps encouragingly, Lebanon’s top three performers– LBC at 38.4 percent, Al Jadeed at 35 percent and MTV at 28.7 percent– do not claim to directly represent a political party or particular politician. But they’re not doing much better job at informing audiences.

 

This is painfully apparent from the opening of each evening’s newscast when instead of immediately satisfying viewers’ thirst for information, these channels pause to cling to the shameful Lebanese broadcasting tradition of tainting the tone from the outset with an editorial. During a blisteringly long monologue of several minutes–an eternity in television time–we see no pictures, as the anchor laboriously mouths a metaphor heavy script that melds the most disparate of local and international headlines. Almost anything can be cobbled together, from a visit by the Turkish foreign minister to local opposition to a minimum wage hike, to form a disjointed narrative, as convoluted as it may be.

Once the preaching subsides, what follows is a bulletin led more by press conferences than actual reporting, with correspondents hurriedly dispatched to the mansions of various feudal Lebanese leaders, rushing to capture their reaction to what someone else has done or said elsewhere in Lebanon or the world.

The fountain of flattery continues as a great chunk of time is devoted to the essential stream of visitation segments, where various and sundry officials are seen endlessly smiling and shaking hands in ornate living rooms. Narrated by a monotone voice over, viewers are quickly told who is there, but almost never what they had to say, if anything of substance was said at all. Bizarrely, one of these pieces recently aired on Al Jadeed featured the news anchor himself in a visit to the army chief’s office. There was no explanation of course.  

At the end of all this, seldom does there remain enough time in the half-hour broadcast for a journalistic investigation into average citizens’ concerns such as the daily power outages Lebanon has seen for decades or their root cause: the corruption and cronyism routinely engaged in by officials and private corporations. When issues are covered, the tone is highly superficial, and frequently characterized by uncorroborated accusations that suit the channel owners’ interest in catering to one shifting ruling alliance or another. Incumbent high level officials or CEOs are almost never held accountable through tangible or documented research.

Unlike their politically-owned counterparts, Lebanon’s so-called independent stations provide
a variety of viewpoints to avoid appearing partisan. But this only reinforces the system of disputing players, almost all of whom occupy a media spotlight they have held for decades. More often than not, that spotlight was once held by their father, cousin, uncle or grandfather.  

Lebanon’s so-called independent news channels appear to represent the country’s only forum for public accountability. Yet beyond parroting the shallow potshots launched by feuding parties and their sponsored stations, they remain too timid to dig deep into the fundamental issues that implicate the system of Lebanese authority and its squandering as a whole. By simply acting as an exchange for attackers, these stations drive supporters closer to their patrons, reinforcing the ruling structure rather than demystifying it.

Average Daily Viewership Share in Lebanon for 2011*

LBC 38.4%
Jadeed: 35 %
MTV 28.7%
OTV 25.4%
Future 16.7%
NBN 12.3%
Manar 12%
TL: 11.6%
Future News: 10.9%


*Source: IPSOS STAT Beirut

 

 

Television [top]

There are nine television broadcast stations in Lebanon, although the application of the audiovisual Law led to the closure of a number of TV channels. These reach more than 97 percent of the adult Lebanese audience and the country has two digital cable television companies, Cable Vision and Econet.

With the exception of the state-owned and scarcely viewed Télé-Liban (founded in 1959, it really came into its own in 1977 in a merger between La Compagnie Libanaise de Télévision and Télé-Orient), all the other eight Lebanese TV stations are directly linked to the different political and religious rival factions of the country (the pro-

Western parliamentary majority vs. the pro-Iranian opposition).  The result is a general lack of professional standards in reporting local, regional and international events, while the news agenda is deeply influenced by the different affiliations.

Although there are no reliable sources regarding TV ratings, the most popular channel in Lebanon seems to be LBC (Lebanese Broadcasting Company). Founded in 1985 by Christian businessmen as the mouthpiece of Lebanese Forces party, LBC is now owned by Pierre Daher with Saudi Prince Walid b. Talal as one of its main share-holders.  Politically it is one of the stations belonging to the so-called ‘pro-Western’ sphere, and is also viewed in other Arab countries.

MTV (Murr Television) belongs to the same sphere of influence. Originally created in 1991 by the Christian businessman Gabriel Murr, it was closed under strong Syrian pressures in 2002 and finally re-launched at the beginning of 2009. In September 2009 MTV and LBC have announced the dismissal of dozens of their employees.

Future Tv (Talifiziyun al-Mustaqbal) and its sister, Future News (Akhbar al-Mustaqbal), are owned by the pro-Saudi Sunni Hariri family and were launched respectively in 1993 and 2007 as the mouthpiece of Saudi interests in Lebanon and the region. Future News was assaulted (alongside with al-Mustaqbal newspaper) by scores of Hezbollah-led militiamen in central Beirut and forced into closing on May 2008 during the short and bloody Lebanese internal conflict. 

The so called ‘pro-Iranian’ (or ‘pro-Syrian’) sphere speaks to the other half of Lebanese public opinion through the very popular al-Manar Tv (Talifiziyun al-Manar) affiliated with the Shiite movement Hezbollah. The ‘Beacon’ was launched in 1991 with the help of Iranian funds, and its harshly anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric is now estimated to reach 15 million daily viewers worldwide.

In addition to al-Manar, there is NBN (National Broadcasting Network), founded in 1996 by the Shiite speaker of the Parliament and leader of the Amal (‘Hope’) movement Nabih Berri. In fact NBN is widely and sarcastically known in Lebanon as the acronym of ‘Nabih Berri News’. In 2000, it launched its satellite channel in order to reach the Lebanese Shiite diaspora in the Arab World, Africa and Europe. 

In the midst of this predominantly Shiite media landscape, the parliamentary opposition can also count on the third main Christian channel, OTV (Orange TV), created in 2007 as the first Lebanese publicly-traded company by the Fpm leader general Aoun. Other minor TV stations include the sensational NewTv (al-Jadid), founded in 2001 and owned by the local business tycoon Tahsin Khayyat – several times called to justice following ‘scoops’ broadcast by its channel – and Télé-Lumière (TV of Light), a religious educationally-based station launched in 1991 and owned by the Catholic-Maronite Church. ***

 

Radio [top]

Currently there are around 40 radio stations in the country (20 AM, 22 FM, 4 short-waves) broadcasting to 85 percent of the Lebanese population (2.85 million receivers). Five of them account for the majority of listeners. They are all dedicated to news and, with the exception of the state-owned Idhaat Lubnan/Radio Liban (Radio of Lebanon, one of the first radios in the Arab world, founded in 1939), reflect their different political and religious affiliations.

Sawt Lubnan (Voice of Lebanon, 1975) is the voice of the pro-Western Christian-Maronite ‘Lebanese Phalanges’ party, while Idhaat an-Nur (Radio of Light) is linked to the Shiite pro-Iranian movement Hezbollah.  Sawt al-Ghadd (Voice of Tomorrow, 1997) is owned by the Free Patriotic Movement (Fpm) led by the Christian-Maronite general Michel Aoun and allied with Hezbollah, while Sawt Lubnan al-Hurr (Voice of Free Lebanon, 1985) is affiliated with the pro-Western Christian-Maronite ‘Lebanese Forces’ party; and Sawt ash-Shaab (Voice of the People, 1987) is of the once-powerful Lebanese Communist Party.

 

Print Media [top]

The Lebanese press includes about 60 licensed political publications, including around ten dailies, almost 40 weeklies and four monthly magazines reporting a total circulation of 220,000 (2008). However, there are no accurate figures on circulation and distribution of newspapers in Lebanon and each paper makes self-promoting claims.  According to the Ministry of Information, as-Safir (The Messanger) and an-Nahar (The Day) supposedly are the most read newspapers in Arabic language, with respectively 50,000 and 45,000 issues daily.  In any case, it is fair to say the largest circulation dailies are an-Nahar, as-Safir and al-Akhbar (The News, founded in 2006).  In the beginning, Al-Balad (The Country, 2003) also had large circulation which subsequently decreased.

As- Safir was founded in 1974 and belongs to a shia Muslim, Talal Salman.  It is now the leading reference point for the Lebanese parliamentary opposition, which supports a Hezbollah-led ‘Islamic resistance’ against Israel and, more broadly, against the USA. At least since 2005, as- Safir’s political orientation has in part shifted towards more radical positions.  For decades, and at least until 1989, it represented the secular left-wing Arab intelligentsia, opposed to Washington policies and loyal to pan-Arab ideals. Its sensationalist style often lacks professional ethics.

Established in 1933 by the Orthodox Christian Tueni family, an-Nahar has since 2004 been characterized by a liberal orientation, which, without denying its roots and Arab affiliations, looks to Europe and the West in general as a political and cultural reference point.  With the deteriorating domestic institutional crisis, exacerbated by regional opposition between a pro-US bloc and the Iranian–Syrian axis, an-Nahar became the voice of the popular campaign against Syrian interference in Lebanon and started to express criticism towards Hezbollah and its main regional supporter, Iran. However, after the formal end of the crisis in May 2008, an-Nahar apparently abandoned its political commitment and has since been gradually reshaped as a ‘newspaper for every Lebanese’. As many observers and readers have pointed out, the paper now "is neither fish nor fowl". Due to "financial difficulties", an-Nahar dismissed 50 employees in September 2009, announcing that in the following months its staff would be reduced from 300 to 220 journalists and print workers.

Both an-Nahar and as-Safir, alongside with the most authoritative pan-Arab daily al-Hayat (founded in Beirut in 1946 but since 1990 owned by the Saudi prince Khalid b. Sultan) are considered the heirs of the local press’s old tradition. The first Arab jarida (newspaper), the Garden of the News (Hadiqat al-Akhbar), was published in 1858 in Beirut and was followed by other illustrious gazettes. Since the 19th century, the urban elite has also played a crucial role in establishing some of the most prestigious newspapers in Egypt and in the new destinations of the Arab diaspora, such as Argentina, Brazil, France.

Nowadays, in addition to an-Nahar, as–Safir, the pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar and the commercial al-Balad, smaller portions of readers are shared by the francophone L’Orient-Le Jour (resulting from the 1971 merger between L’Orient, founded in 1904, and Le Jour established in 1897), the English-language The Daily Star (1952) and the pro-Saudi al-Mustaqbal (The Future, established in 1995). This last newspaper is the organ of the Future Movement and is owned by the Lebanese-Saudi business tycoon Saad Hariri, son and political heir of the former premier Rafiq Hariri, who was killed in a blast in Beirut in 2005.

A daily newspaper costs from 50 cents to a euro. For those who cannot read Arabic, The Middle East Reporter (MER) issues a daily English-language summary of the daily Lebanese press reports. Along with a rich variety of dailies, Lebanon offers a vast repertoire of weeklies and periodicals. Those focusing mainly on internal and regional political affairs and on social gossip (al-Hawadeth, al-Jaras, al-Watan al-Arabi, ash-Shiraa, al-Masira/an-Najwa – all in Arabic except for the two francophone L’Hebdo Magazine and La Revue du Liban, alongside with the English-language Monday Morning) – are scarcely reliable as journalistic sources, while the ones dedicated to business and finance – most of them in English and French (Executive, Lebanon Opportunities, Le Commerce du Levant, al-Iktissad Wal-Aamal) –  include a number of interesting insight features on social, economic and cultural aspects of Lebanon, in each issue. For a complete list of Lebanese dailies and periodicals see Concept-Mafhoum website dedicated to the Arab press.