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The Syrian Civil War in Lebanese Nightly News
Abstract by Mr. Daryl Carr On Session 092  (Winning Media Battles)

On Friday, October 11 at 2:00 pm

2013 Annual Meeting

Abstract
In this paper, I look at how three Lebanese satellite stations cover the Syrian civil war in their news broadcasts. It is useful to analyze Lebanon’s news programming because the relative lack of regulation over its media allows them to take drastically different political stances. Syria and Lebanon’s unique political and cultural connection causes the conflict to permeate both the debates over foreign and domestic policy. My paper is significant because it elucidates the specific ways in which the Syrian crisis divides the already fractured Lebanese populace. My analysis reveals how regional news sources interpret the Arab Spring. The stations that I take into consideration are the Lebanese Broadcast Corporation (LBC), al-Manar, and Murr Television (MTV). These three stations represent distinct political factions within Lebanon. Both LBC and MTV have owners that were critical of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon prior to 2005, but MTV’s relationship to the Syrian regime was so antagonistic that it was forced to shut down in 2002 and did not reopen until 2009. Al-Manar, Hezbollah’s main media outlet, is very supportive of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The contrasting political stances of these news stations find expression in the way the Syrian conflict is portrayed in nightly news broadcasts. Through use of textual and content analysis, I look at seven days of broadcasts from 2012 starting on December 14 and ending on December 21. I record the amount of time spent on each story, the primary sources cited, the stories’ narratives, and the people interviewed. Further, through the use of discursive analysis, I examine the language used to describe the Syrian crisis and the frames used to construct narrative in the stories that refer to Syria. This information enables me to determine the priority given to the Syrian conflict and the particular spin of each station’s coverage. I find that the stations differ in the amount of legitimacy they ascribe to the Syrian opposition or the Assad regime. I also find stark differences in the way the stations portray the international community. Notably, I find that LBC, and MTV to a lesser extent, emphasize the actions that the Lebanese state is taking in response to the conflict and the refugee crisis. In contrast, al-Manar gives relatively little coverage to Lebanese state officials, focusing instead on Syrian officials and Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Discipline
Media Arts
Geographic Area
Lebanon
Sub Area
Media