The media in Lebanon is one of the freest in the Middle East, a freedom largely attributed to the fact that media outlets, for many years, have been utilized by political figures or others in positions of power. This financial backing from persons with great amounts of influence generally stipulates that anything can be reported, and no one will get into trouble because there is a general disregard for the moral obligations of reporters or journalists. As such, an the media in Lebanon is one of an open forum.
The openness of the Lebanese media has multiple dangers, one being that when reporters already know what they are going to say, or who they must support, or the political beliefs that they have to preach, there is a decrease in the need to access outside sources to complete stories. Throughout the majority of the Lebanese news stories that I have read, sources have been sparse, or a news outlet would source someone that also worked there. In a network report done by Internews in April of 2009, they noted that “many [Lebanese] media institutions suffer from a lack of human sources.”
Instead of turning to individuals for sources to crack a story or be the first to investigate something with the help of an inside source, outlets tend to write highly biased and exaggerated stories that may be based in truth but spun to something far from the truth. As said in a piece on the Lebanese media landscape by Sarah El-Richani:
The Lebanese media largely reflects the social and political structures in which it operates. In short, the Lebanese political system is defined by weak state structures, deeply rooted confessionals and patronage networks that are all reinforced by a network of political and religious elites using a perverted prison of consociational democracy.
Because of these very prevalent media biases that various outlets act on, the most outrageous things that are reported are not necessarily corruption in the government. Instead, the most outrageous things in the media are the extreme exaggeration of anything and everything, including religious and political sects. Outlets will frame political leaders or figures that oppose their benefactors in very horrible lights and overstate the accomplishments of the figures that fund their outlet.
Instead of looking to anonymous sources to aid in cracking stories and doing real reporting, those involved in the Lebanese media busy themselves with creating highly biased and at times outrageous stories in order to support their beliefs and the beliefs of their viewers or readers.
LEBANON 