By: Dr. Abdelaziz Tarekji
-Investigative Journalist and Researcher in International Human Rights Violations-
Freedom of the press in Lebanon is no longer a passing incident measured by the number of summonses or security notices; it has turned into a complete system of restriction in which politics, law, and the judiciary interlock. Since the beginning of 2024, Lebanon has witnessed an unprecedented escalation in the systematic targeting of journalists and media institutions: field targeting in the southern contact zones during the war, assaults on media crews during coverage, and, domestically, a feverish judicial race that employs legal texts to silence criticism instead of protecting it.
Authorities base most of these prosecutions on provisions of the Lebanese Penal Code, foremost Articles 383 to 387, which criminalize “defamation, slander, and insult” against public employees or public authorities, and which stipulate penalties reaching imprisonment and fines, even though Article (13) of the Lebanese Constitution guarantees “the freedom to express opinions by word and in writing and the freedom of the press within the bounds of the law.” Law No. 81/2018 on Electronic Transactions and Personal Data is also used to expand the concept of “cybercrimes,” such that electronic newspapers and journalists are summoned for interrogation before the Cybercrimes Bureau instead of appearing before the Court of Publications, which is originally competent for publication cases — in clear violation of the principle of jurisdiction set out in the Publications Law No. 382/1994.
What is taking place is not merely an error in application, but a method of bending the law to serve power. The result today is: a newsroom working under bombardment or under summons; and a media voice choking between an unknown bullet and a judicial warrant. What is reduced in local media to a “political quarrel” is, in its essence, a matter of public right that touches the core of Article (19) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which affirms that every person has “the right to hold opinions without interference,” and the right to “freedom of expression, including freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds.” Yet the complex Lebanese reality today shows that the law which was supposed to protect this right has become the most effective instrument to undermine it.
Statistical figures that belie the claim that “everything is fine”
The year 2024 was not merely another year in the record of Lebanese journalism; it represented the deadliest year for journalists worldwide, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The war in southern Lebanon took a painful share of this figure after the Israeli strike on 25 October 2024, which took the lives of a number of journalists and media workers while they were covering in the field — in clear breach of Article 79 of Additional Protocol I to the 1977 Geneva Conventions, which explicitly provides that “journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered civilians and shall be protected as such.”
Inside Lebanon, the scene was no better. During January 2025, field assaults and direct prevention of live broadcasting were recorded against media crews while covering events in the south, which reminded that the press in Lebanon no longer faces danger only from the outside but also from the inside. These incidents, documented by unions and international and local organizations, confirmed that “the hostile environment toward journalists has become part of the general scene,” not a temporary exception.
On the judicial level, the year 2025 witnessed an unprecedented escalation in legal prosecutions against independent media institutions under the cover of “defamation,” “insult,” or “cybercrimes.” Dozens of summonses and interrogations targeted journalists and digital sites on the background of financial and banking investigations dealing with matters of public interest, in a context that reflects using the judiciary as a methodical tool of deterrence rather than a refuge for justice.
Assaults on journalists in Lebanon are no longer confined to security forces or to judicial procedures; they have extended to include supporters of political and military parties who have come to treat any critical opinion as an “existential threat” to their projects or leaderships. The assaults have ranged from direct physical attacks during coverage, to digital smear campaigns on social media platforms, and public incitement accusing journalists of “treason” or “collaboration,” merely for addressing corruption files or criticizing a leader’s performance. Often these assaults pass without any genuine judicial pursuit, which reinforces a culture of impunity.
This patterned practice recalls Article (329) of the Lebanese Penal Code, which criminalizes “whoever uses violence or threats to prevent a person from exercising a legitimate right, or to force him to do or refrain from doing something against his will,” a provision that should have been a shield to protect journalists but has turned into a neglected text in practical reality, rarely applied in assaults of a political or partisan nature.
The most dangerous aspect of this phenomenon is that it has come to be practiced with the knowledge of political leaderships or with their tolerance, which makes it akin to an undeclared policy to subjugate the media and to transform the press from a supervisory authority into a voice counted within loyalties. Thus the journalist in Lebanon becomes exposed to a double targeting: by the state through its laws, and by the parties through their street — in a scene summed up as “punishment for the truth wherever it is found.”
When these realities are aggregated, they show that what is presented in official discourse as “individual cases” is nothing but a coordinated system of restriction whose tools range between the bullet and the lawsuit, and between “security interrogation” and “financial investigation.” The result is one: the press in Lebanon is besieged from all directions, and the talk of “enshrined freedom of the media” has become nothing but a slogan repeated in statements, while the violations have become systematic, recurrent, and, most dangerously, practiced in the name of the law itself.
How judicial paths are exploited to restrict the press
In Lebanon, the laws are no longer written to protect the word but to restrict it. The provisions that were set to preserve human dignity and the status of the public employee have become a sword raised in the face of whoever writes the truth. Articles 383 to 389 of the Lebanese Penal Code are used to criminalize every opinion that criticizes authority or exposes corruption under the pretext of “defamation, slander, or insult.” These articles have turned into a legislative guillotine that threatens any journalist who dares to call things by their names, forgetting that Article 13 of the Lebanese Constitution guarantees “freedom of expression by word and in writing and the freedom of the press and publication.”
Even more grievous, the state has created for itself a new supervisory arm under the banner of technology. The Cybercrimes Bureau no longer pursues hackers, but online journalists. This bureau relies on Law No. 81/2018 on electronic transactions, which has been emptied of its original purpose and turned into a legal trap to which media professionals are led as if they were defendants. Electronic publication has come to be treated as a crime; the journalistic article is read as incriminating evidence — as if the free word were more dangerous than any financial or political crime.
As for the Court of Publications — which was established by the Publications Law No. 382/1994 to be the legal stronghold of the press — it has been deliberately neutralized. Journalists are referred to public prosecutions or to the offices of the judicial police, in a crude substitution of legal accountability with security intimidation. There, the questions are not about professional evidence, but about “who funds you” and “who gave you the information,” turning justice into an intelligence investigation clothed in judicial attire.
In this methodical way, the relationship between the press and the state has been reshaped: the press is no longer a supervisory authority, but an open security file; the judiciary is no longer the protector of the right, but a partner in gagging mouths. What is taking place is not the application of the law but a soft assassination of truth in the name of the law.
Accountabilities — who asks, and who is held to account?
When the press is targeted, the journalist is not the one to be asked about what he wrote; rather, the homeland is asked about what it kept silent about. The Lebanese state bears a clear legal and moral responsibility to protect journalists in war and in peace under Article (79) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1977, which considers civilian journalists “protected persons” who must not be attacked or have their work obstructed. Article (19) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights likewise obliges the state to guarantee freedom of expression rather than restrict it, and to protect those who exercise it rather than punish them.
But in Lebanon these international obligations have turned into slogans hung in reports, while reality testifies to the opposite: bombardment without accountability, summonses without justification, and an official silence that protects the aggressor instead of the journalist.
As for the legislative and judicial authorities, their responsibility is doubled. When the articles of the Penal Code (383–389) remain in force and their abusive use is overlooked, they participate in the wrongdoing rather than regulate it. And when public prosecutions allow publication cases to be referred to security offices instead of the Court of Publications, they do not apply the law but bend it to serve power. A judiciary that colludes with fear cannot do justice to the truth.
Nor is the responsibility of political and economic forces any less grave. Lawsuits brought by banks, parties, and influential figures have turned into a systematic tool of intimidation against independent media. Every journalistic investigation into a financial or political file is met with a lawsuit; every investigative report is pursued by a complaint, as if the goal of this system were not to defend “reputation” but to assassinate society’s right to know.
Responsibilities here are interconnected: the state keeps silent, the judiciary executes, and the politician incites, yielding a single system governed by a single rule: whoever writes is held to account; whoever plunders is protected. In this inverted scene, the law becomes a shield for power, not for the citizen, and the role of justice is reduced to protecting the powerful from criticism rather than protecting the weak from repression.
The legal framework that ought to be reformed immediately
Any genuine reform in the file of press freedom does not start from slogans but from the texts. The current legal system in Lebanon has become a one-edged weapon used to muzzle mouths rather than to regulate freedom of expression. Therefore, the first step on the path of reform is to abolish criminalization in cases of opinion and publication and to replace custodial penalties with fair civil mechanisms that compensate for harm without killing the word. The word is not imprisoned; it is debated.
It is likewise necessary to confine jurisdiction over publication cases to the Court of Publications as stipulated in the Publications Law No. 382/1994, and to stop the random referrals to public prosecutions or to “cybercrimes” offices that are used today as tools of digital intimidation. The Court of Publications exists to guarantee the balance between freedom and responsibility and to achieve professional justice, not political justice.
As for Law No. 81/2018 on electronic transactions, it must undergo a substantial amendment that prevents its use as a weapon against digital media. This law was designed to regulate electronic signatures and data, not to prosecute a journalist who wrote an investigative piece on a website. Leaving it in its ambiguous formulation keeps a sword of censorship suspended over electronic journalism, which today is the most vital space in the Lebanese media scene.
A comprehensive national protocol must also be put in place for the protection and safety of journalists and media crews during coverage in the field, especially in border areas or during security disturbances. This protocol must oblige the military and security services to protect journalists rather than monitor them, and must guarantee freedom of access to information rather than prevent it.
And finally, there must be a commitment to independent, transparent international investigations into all the crimes that targeted journalists during conflicts, whether in the Israeli bombardment of 2024 or the domestic assaults that followed. The absence of accountability means the repetition of the crime, and official silence is an undeclared participation in killing the truth. Reforming the laws is not a legal luxury but a condition for the survival of Lebanese journalism; if it loses its freedom, the country loses its last mirror.
Why this is a “public right,” not a narrow professional battle
An assault on the press is not a dispute between two professionals, nor a quarrel between authority and opinion; it is an aggression against the public right in its finest meaning. Every bullet fired at a journalist is a bullet that strikes the society’s right to know, and every politicized judicial summons is a summons to collective silence. The press is not a profession among professions; it is the last safety valve of society. When the press is suppressed, light is withheld from corruption and violations are left without witnesses.
Freedom of the press is not a personal privilege for journalists, but a collective right guaranteed constitutionally and popularly, because it represents the medium that conveys the voice of the wronged to public opinion, turns information into oversight, and turns the word into an instrument of accountability. This is what Article (19) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms, stating that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
In Lebanon, however, these principles have turned into papers kept in annual reports, while reality says that every day a journalist is summoned is a day in which transparency retreats, and every silence imposed on a newsroom is a step toward a state without a mirror.
The struggle for freedom of the press is not the battle of a syndicate or of a single outlet; it is society’s battle over its memory and its right to the truth. When the press is silenced, only the official narrative is written, and the independent voice is buried beneath piles of judicial notices and threats.
In its essence, the press is the people’s right to know, and it is the scale of every democracy; if this scale is upset, all other justices are upset with it. What is happening in Lebanon today is not a professional struggle, but a struggle between transparency and darkness, between just law and weaponized law, between a society that wants to see and a power that fears being seen. Therefore, defending the press is not solidarity with a profession but a national and moral duty; whoever keeps silent today about a journalist’s summons may be summoned tomorrow merely for telling the truth.
In conclusion: a call to those who hold decision-making… take your hands off the press
Lebanon, which used to be described as the free forum in the East, has today become a meticulous laboratory for suppressing the free word — suppression that does not issue only from a bullet or a military order, but from outdated laws and apparatuses that reproduce fear by “legal” means. In this country that gave birth to newspapers once translated across Arab capitals, pens today are summoned for interrogation, and truth is put on trial under the charge of “defamation.”
Real reform does not begin with speeches about “freedom of the media,” but begins with abolishing criminalization of publication and opinion in the Penal Code; with restoring the Court of Publications as the sole reference for media cases; and with stopping all forms of security-style summonses disguised as legal procedures. A Law for the Protection of Journalists and Media Workers must also be enacted immediately, to safeguard their right to field work and to oblige the security services to protect them, not to pursue them.
But more important than the texts is the political and moral stance. Lebanon’s political parties and armed factions are required today, without equivocation, to lift their hands off the media, to cease incitement against journalists merely for criticizing them, and to realize that suppressing opinion is not a defense of identity, but an assassination of the homeland from within. The state must assume its responsibility to protect journalists — not to justify assaults against them or to cover up for the assailants.
Lebanon’s standing and prestige will not be restored unless it regains its right to a free word that does not fear summonses, is not intimidated by militias, and is not silenced by judges. If silence continues, truth will remain the last victim in a country that was once the cradle of Arab journalism but today stands on the edge of becoming its grave.
Exclusive to: The Capitol Institute
