BEIRUT: Lebanon may have overtaken Israel in terms of Middle East press liberty, but a culture of censorship still weighs heavily on freedom of speech, said a new report. The Samir Kassir Eyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom (SKeyes), in its November bulletin, said that in spite of relative domestic calm and good working conditions for journalists following the June 2009 elections, “censorship on culture has returned to Lebanon.” 

The report cited the banning of a Brazilian samba carnival in Tyre, in October, after local religious leaders objected to the festival on moral grounds. 

“The naked festival is incompatible with the religious and Islamic morals of Tyre,” said a clerical statement at the time. 

Lebanon has long been a bastion for international reporters in the Middle East, with a number of global news agencies operating bureaus in Beirut throughout the country’s Civil War during the 1970s and 1980s. 

The report, on freedom of the press and cultural freedom in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan, references the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, released last month. 

Although Lebanon performs unremarkably against a collection of developed countries, coming 61st globally – an annual rise of five places – it is second only to Kuwait in the Middle East and North Africa region. Israel and Egypt make up the top for MENA countries in terms of press freedom. 

The SKeyes report said that the ranking “pointed at the same time that the countries [which ranked highest] enjoy relative freedom, while the freedom of the press in the remaining countries is almost nonexistent.” 

The report attributed Lebanon’s relatively lofty position to “the relative political calm [that] was reflected in the security situation in the country after the elections of June 2009, especially [concerning] working conditions of journalists.” 

Israel, by contrast, slipped from 46th globally in 2008 to 93rd in 2009, a year-on-year fall of 47 places. 

The report attributed this to the hampering of reporting on incidents such as the recent clashes at the Al-Aqsa compound in Occupied Jerusalem. 

It detailed a total of eight journalists who had been either beaten up by Israeli police or protesters, or arrested and denied access to certain areas of the flare-up. 

These included a reporter for the website “Palestinians of 48,” two Associated Press photographers, two photographers from the Israeli press and a reporter from the Palestine News Network. 

The report also touched upon the recent layoffs from Lebanese media corporations. 

Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) laid off staff after the chairman of the board of directors announced his intention to review the number of employees in different departments, in a step seen by the dismissed employees as politically motivated. The dismissed staff all had links to the Lebanese Forces, which created LBC to be its media mouthpiece in 1985. 

LBC’s chairman Pierre Daher had previously said he opposed the station becoming “a propaganda tool for the Lebanese Forces.” 

The layoffs at LBC came as news channel ANB dismissed a number of employees, including “a number of journalists,” while in September, Al-Nahar newspaper and television station MTV laid off a number of staff, which “triggered disparate reactions in the Lebanese media,” according the SKeyes report. – The Daily Star