Lebanon Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
April 17, 2012
About the MSI
IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country’s media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and produced the first Middle East and North Africa MSI in 2005.
MSI Overview | Africa | Asia | Europe & Eurasia | Middle East & North Africa
Download the Complete Lebanon MSI Chapter (PDF): 2013 Arabic | 2013 English | 2010/11 (in Arabic) | 2009 | 2008 | 2006/7 | 2005
The 2013 Lebanon MSI (Arabic and English) includes a "sixth objective" funded by USAID/Lebanon and currently only conducted in Lebanon. This study measures, from the perspective of citizens, the following: how well media capture public concerns in a non-partisan manner; the media's ability to serve as a facilitator of public debate and as an outlet for citizen voices; and measures the capacity of media to hold politicians, business, and other actors accountable. The methodology is similar to the standard MSI methodology and is explained in detail at the end of the 2013 Arabic and English MSI.
MSI Lebanon - 2013 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 2.01
As throughout so much of its recent history, it was Syria that pushed Lebanon closest to the edge. “The Syria story was a trap for everyone. It uncovered and magnified the weaknesses of each media,” said Roland Barbar, executive producer for Future TV.
From a high of 2.45 in the chaotic aftermath of the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, Lebanon’s overall media score has declined consistently as the religious and political rivalry between the Shia-led March 8 movement, backed by Iran and Syria, and the Sunni-led March 14 movement, opposed to Syria and backed by Saudi Arabia, has deepened into a seemingly existential struggle. The decline this year, from 2.03 to 2.01, may be tiny, but confirms the trend that is taking the Lebanese media sector toward an “unsustainable, mixed system,” according to the MSI score definitions.
With Syria now in a state of civil war, a crisis which decimated Lebanon for 15 years and laid the foundations of the country’s turbulent sectarian power sharing system, journalists found themselves working in a political and social environment increasingly unwilling to see beyond black and white. “The state is so weak compared to religious groups. The Shia refuse to listen to anything that criticizes them and so do the Sunni,” said panelist Fidaa Itani, a senior Al Akhbar correspondent who resigned after his editor censored his work and began writing editorials in praise of Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s military campaign against other Syrians.
As Syria’s once peaceful protest movement morphed into a violent sectarian struggle, Lebanese media affiliated with March 8 parties, such as Hezbollah and Amal, descended into parroting reports by Syria’s state news agency SANA and publishing content from international agencies with references to Syria’s “rebels” replaced with “terrorists,” as per the official line of the Assad regime. On the other side, March 14 media, such as Future TV, established partnerships with Syrian activist groups such as Sham Press, even as scrutiny on the authenticity of work produced by such groups grew sharper. Barbar recognized failings by both sides of the media. “Just because you oppose Assad doesn’t mean you have to do propaganda,” he said.
“Lebanon has become a case of a decentralized dictatorship,” said Khodr Salame, blogger and editor of Jawan. “Under the umbrella of a big democracy there’s lots of dictatorships between sects and within sects, in every house and every street, controlling what you can say.”
Three of five objectives—Freedom of Speech, Professional Journalism, and Plurality of News—remained nearly unchanged. Only Objective 5, Supporting Institutions, saw a modest rise in score, due to the election of a new head of the Journalists Union and admission of new members for the first time in half a century. Objective 4, Business Management, fell back into the “unsustainable, mixed system” range for the first time since the debut 2005 study. That year it scored 1.92; this year it received a score of 1.75.
