After carefully studying Majzoub’s 2015 documentary film, Fallen Television (تلفزيون وائع), the role of Political Economy of the media (PEM) in Lebanon has become clearer than we already suspected.
Unfortunately, in recent years, media has not only been advertising commodities, but has also been commodified itself, which Fuchs (2016) refers to as capitalist communications. According to Majzoub (2015), the Lebanese media companies are being treated like normal businesses, keeping “exchange value” (Fuchs, 2016) and profit as a primary goal.
Moreover, the most common method for shaping Lebanon’s media through political economy is Ownership (Fuchs, 2016). While sectarianism has been taking over Lebanon for as long as we can remember, it is no surprise to discover that almost every Lebanese TV channel is owned by a particular party/ politician, and only serves to support that party’s beliefs (Majzoub, 2015).
In addition, Lebanese media tends to be tremendously impacted by Western media. This has to do with the fact that the very owners of the TV channels are those who fit a certain higher social class, and their content was made to match elite’s expectation (Khiabany, 2016). As a result, when satellites were emerging in the region, many Lebanese channels aired French and English shows, while the content of those shows did not necessarily reflect Lebanese reality.
Furthermore, Lebanese media also underwent “Privatization” (Khiabany, 2016). Initially, the first Lebanese TV station was state-owned then it got partially privatized as Rafiq Al-Harari bought the private share. Nowadays it’s very rare to find public TV channels that allow secular, free forms of expression.
Reference List
Majzoub, M. (Creator). (2015). Fallen Television [Documentary Film]. American University of Beirut Media Studios.
Fuchs, C. (2016). Reading Marx in the Information Age: A Media and Communication Studies Perspective on Capital Volume 1. Taylor & Francis.
Khiabany, G. (2016). The Middle East. In Birkinbine B., Gomez R., & Wasko J. (Eds.), Global Media Giants (pp. 273 – 286). Routledge.
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