How the political economy of media shapes television programming in Lebanon.

Fuchs (2016) introduces the term ownership as a political way to shape media. In Lebanon, several media corporates are owned by different parties and sects which leads eventually to the reflection of the party’s beliefs and bias into the programs being presented in the channel. For instance, Al Manar is owned by Hezbollah and the programs in the channel introduce the sect’s own opinions and principles rather than providing the audience with objective and accurate information or stories. In addition, it is biased towards certain issues as what Johnson (2016) mentioned about bias by selection and omission. The death of the Lebanese singer Sabah was not broadcasted while the death of the writer Said Akl after a few days was being announced despite of his support to Israel which explicitly elaborate the idea of ownership on filtering the news (Herman & Chomsky, 1988).

Lebanese media showed as well a rapid growth as what Khiabany (2016) discussed. There was a huge increase in the Lebanese media channels after the civil war that portrayed the societal image of the Lebanese. Khiabany (2016) also mentioned the concept of “Gulf capital” in which media corporates are owned or backed up by rich gulf countries. One example of that is the Lebanese channel Al Jadeed that receives aids from Qatar.

References:

Fuchs, C. (2016). Introduction, read pp. 1-5 only. In Reading Marx In The Information Age: A Media and Communication Studies Perspective on Capital Volume 1. New York: Routledge. Retrieved from: http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/uploads/introduction.pdf

Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). A Propaganda Model [read excerpts]. Excerpted from Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media (1st ed.). New York, N.Y: Pantheon Books. Retrieved from: https://chomsky.info/consent01/

Johnson, M. (2016). How to detect news bias [student handout]. Media Smarts. Retrieved from: http://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/pdfs/lesson- plan/Lesson_Bias_News_Sources.pdf

Khiabany, G. (2016). The Middle East. In: B. Birkinbine; G. Rodrigi and J. Wasko (eds.) Global Media Giants. New York: Routledge. Retrieved from: http://research.gold.ac.uk/18559/1/The%20Middle%20East.pdf