Country’s political stalemate and a worsening security situation have seriously impacted funding of media houses

AFP, Beirut:
Its slogan was “the voice of the voiceless”, but after four decades the
prestigious Lebanese daily Al Safir is in danger of falling silent,
illustrating the unprecedented crisis rocking the country’s media.

Lebanese
newspapers, long seen as a beacon of freedom in a tumultuous region,
are suffering because of the country’s political paralysis and a slump
in funding from rival regional powers. Al Safir’s main competitor, Al Nahar, is also struggling to survive and its employees have not been paid for months. “Our
ink has run dry,” said Talal Salman, founder and editor-in-chief of Al
Safir. “The Lebanese press, a pioneer in the Arab world, is undergoing
its worst crisis ever.”

“We’ve run out of funds and we’re desperately looking for a partner to finance the paper,” Salman said.

He blames the country’s political stalemate, with existing divisions exacerbated by the war in neighbouring Syria.

Lebanon is dominated by two main blocs: one backed by the West and Gulf states, and the other by Iran and Syria.

The
rift means there have been no parliamentary elections since 2009, and
lawmakers have failed for nearly two years to elect a president.

“Without politics, there is no media, and there is no politics in Lebanon today,” Salman said.

Experts
say the crisis is being driven by several factors, including an
advertising revenue slump that has hit media worldwide and is
exacerbated in Lebanon by a fragile security situation.

The
long-standing reliance of Lebanese media on political financing from the
Middle East’s rival powers is also key to the problem.

Many of
the region’s most influential journalists have written their best
stories for Lebanese newspapers, relishing the freedom to be critical
that one could only dream of under other more restrictive governments.

But the freedom was never complete.

Some
journalists have paid the ultimate price for their work, including Al
Nahar’s Samir Kassir and Jibran Tueini who were both murdered as the
Syrian army pulled out of Lebanon in 2005.

Al Safir’s Salman escaped an assassination attempt himself in 1984, when Lebanon was mired in civil war.

At
its core, Lebanon’s media sector has long been a playing field for the
region’s competing powers, and without their financing, newspapers and
TV stations simply cannot survive.

During the 1975-1990 Lebanese
civil war, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Iraq’s Saddam Hussain and the
Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Yasser Arafat were key financiers.

Al
Safir acted as the voice of Arab nationalists and defenders of the
Palestinian cause while Al Nahar stood for Lebanese pluralism.

With
social media and citizen journalism taking centre-stage in the wake of
the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in the region, regimes have taken to
setting up newspapers on their own turf.

The Lebanese media “has
lost its impact and its authority, and that means a commensurate
decrease in interest from the Arab regimes that were funding them,” said
Georges Sadaqa, dean of the journalism faculty at the Lebanese
University.

The editors of Al Nahar, founded in 1933, have denied
rumours that it may face closure, but its journalists have not been paid
for seven months and several have been let go.

Staff at
English-language The Daily Star as well as the Al Mustaqbal newspaper
and television station owned by billionaire Sunni former prime minister
Sa’ad Hariri say they too are owed pay.

“The crisis of the press
is a key part of the crisis of Lebanon,” said Mohammad Farhat, managing
editor of the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, which has offices in London and
Beirut.

“And the death of politics means the death of the press.

The paper has downsized from 18 to just 12 pages, and the fate of its 159 employees remains uncertain.