Beirut
(AFP) – Its slogan was “the voice of the voiceless”, but after four
decades the prestigious Lebanese daily As-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.
As-Safir’s main competitor, An-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
As-Safir. “The Lebanese press, a pioneer in the Arab world, is
undergoing its worst crisis ever.”
The paper has downsized from 18 to just 12 pages, and the fate of its 159 employees remains uncertain.
“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 kingdoms, 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.
– Freedom to criticise –
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 oppressive governments.
But the freedom was never complete.
Some
journalists have paid the ultimate price for their work, including
An-Nahar’s Samir Kassir and Gibran Tueini who were both murdered as the
Syrian army pulled out of Lebanon in 2005.
As-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 Moamer Kadhafi, Iraq’s Saddam
Hussein and the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Yasser Arafat were
key financiers.
As-Safir
acted as the voice of Arab nationalists and defenders of the
Palestinian cause while An-Nahar stood for Lebanese pluralism.
After the war, Saudi, Qatari and Iranian money took over, but a few years on, even Riyadh’s oil-fuelled coffers are running dry.
– ‘Lost authority’ –
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 Sadaka, dean of the journalism faculty at
the Lebanese University.
In
2015, Wikileaks revealed that a Lebanese TV station received $2 million
in donations from Saudi Arabia — 10 percent of what it had asked the
kingdom to pay.
The
editors of An-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 Saad 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.”
