Written by: Rihab Abu Al-Hassan

 

Translated by: Assaad Maalouf

 

 

 

 There is a need from both the legislative and executive authorities as well as media professionals for big work for the purpose of reforming and updating media laws which are perceived by Information Minister, Tarek Mitri, as disparate, contradictory and outdated, and thus incompatible with contemporary media demands. For this reason, the Minister envisaged a necessity for finding new systems for governing media laws and organizing them.

 

In a special interview with the National News Agency, Minister Mitri highlighted many attempts he made, along with media resources owners and media people in various media fields, to conduct a dialogue essential for formulating fresh ideas – something that has thus far not been done. However, said the Minister, this matter prompted him to consult with media specialists and experts to figure out text formats for the discussion. The Minister disclosed that, with these efforts, he is currently at the stage of drafting a comprehensive blue print to be discussed later, in order to arrive at a provision for a complete law project.  

 

 The Minister continued:

 

Countering this discordance and incompatibility in media laws can be through setting a comprehensive media law which can replace the current fragmented laws and keep abreast with new media techniques.

 

 

 

The Minister indicated that what drives him to think of introducing a unified law system lies in the difficulty of drawing a line of separation between printed media and audiovisual and electronic ones. This difficulty is due to the fact that all these journalists working in these media fields are themselves receiving media news from the same resources. The news we read in electronic resources are the same we read in newspapers and the same we hear from audiovisual resources. Despite that each media resource has its own peculiarity, these resources became no more independent. And so, peculiarities began fading in favor of boosted subscription rates.

 

And as universal problems confront Lebanese media - matters of liberty of expression, autonomy, career organization, rights as well as the correlation between media legislation and the penal code - if a legislation then were introduced to defame and slander, the penalty code would become immediately applicable to all medias concerned. It is for this reason that the Minister said he is supp