Lebanese journalism under Proposition 7

Regular readers of Lebanese newspapers have come to realise that “news” here is a misnomer. Not only there’s hardly anything new in what journalists lengthily discuss, but there’s very little factual substance in it. I don’t mean to demean our national press or rant and rave for the sake of it. Just pick any article randomly and you’ll get my point. Today’s dominant topic was Michel Aoun’s public declarations on his conditions for joining the government. Very little can be said about such a declaration, and it’s certainly not surprising (neither in its content nor in its timing) and nothing in it was new.

But this didn’t stop our journalists and editorialists (useless differentiation nowadays) from delving into head-on. The argument can be summed up formally in the following equation: prejudice +  assumptions + judgement. So much ink spilled over so little information !  I couldn’t help remembering Wittgenstein’s 7th proposition: “What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence”.

Blogging: beside the point…

It’s been almost a month I haven’t blogged. And as usual, I wonder if there’s a point to all this. Why do people blog? Why do others read blog postings? Is it a waste of time? What kind of need does it answer? I don’t know.

I’m going to give it another chance in these coming weeks. Here’s a glimpse of the topics that I might be discussing.

• A conference on Democracy and Religion at the Orient Institute
• A book signing at the Francophone Book Fair
• A summary of an article on Martyrocracy
• A reaction to an article published by Samir Frangieh.
• Something on Middle Eastern Peace sites and blogs.