The “Maharat” Foundation welcomed the adoption of the new media law in Lebanon, considering that the step constitutes a reform milestone after a path that spanned more than 16 years of work and discussion regarding modernizing the legislative framework regulating the media sector.
The organization wrote on the “X” platform: “After more than 16 years of work, the new media law has become a reality. We welcome this reform step and its gains, and we affirm that work continues to protect what has been achieved, and to ensure that the law is implemented in its reform spirit.”
Maharat’s position comes the day after the House of Representatives approved the new media law, after a long legislative process in which official, parliamentary and union bodies, human rights and media institutions participated over the years, amid continuous demands to update the legislation that governs media work in Lebanon.
The importance of the new law stems from the fact that it comes in line with the major transformations that the media sector has witnessed during recent decades, after an essential part of the Lebanese legislative environment remained linked to laws that were established before the widespread spread of the Internet, social networking sites, and digital platforms, and the radical change that accompanied them in the production, dissemination, and consumption of news.
Over the past years, the draft media law has undergone a long series of discussions and amendments within parliamentary committees, in parallel with a broad discussion on media freedoms, the rights of journalists, and the regulation of visual, audio, print, and electronic media, in addition to the need to find a legal framework capable of dealing with the new digital landscape.
The issue of protecting freedom of opinion and expression was one of the most prominent points that accompanied the discussion about the law, along with demands to remove prosecutions related to journalistic work from procedures that may lead to restrictions on journalists, and to provide legal guarantees commensurate with the nature of the profession and its role.
Modernizing the law has also gained increasing importance with the expansion of electronic media and social media platforms and the rapid entry of artificial intelligence technologies into the media sector, which has made traditional legislation unable in many aspects to keep pace with new tools and methods of producing and distributing content.
Information Minister Paul Morcos had followed up on the media law file during the last stage, while its approval in the House of Representatives represented the end of a long legislative stage and the beginning of another stage related to the mechanisms for implementing its articles and transforming them into practical procedures.
Hence, the “Maharat” Foundation focused its position on the fact that the adoption of the law does not represent the end of the process, but rather that the next stage will focus on protecting the gains it contains and ensuring its implementation in accordance with the reformist spirit that accompanied the work on it, especially with regard to media freedoms and the rights of workers in the sector.
After more than 16 years of discussion and legislative and legal work, the adoption of the new law opens a different phase for the Lebanese media, with the main test remaining in how its provisions are implemented and the extent of its ability to keep pace with the rapid transformations taking place in the sector.
