Lebanon”s MTV Returns After Seven Years Off Air
A private Lebanese television shut down in 2002 by a then Syrian-backed government is to return to the airwaves on Tuesday, just two months before the parliamentary election.
"MTV today returns as a podium for all Lebanese, for all parties, to speak out on what is best for the country," Ghayath Yazbeck, who heads the channel”s news and political programs, told Agence France Presse (AFP).
A court shut down MTV, or Murr Television, in September 2002 on the grounds it had violated a law on election broadcasts in Lebanon, where local media outlets can only survive through political patronage.
Yazbeck said the channel had historically opposed Syria”s 29-year military and political dominance of Lebanon, which ended in 2005 in the wake of mass protests following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
But he said MTV had also supported the Syrian-backed Hizbullah militia in its fight to drive Israeli forces from Lebanon, but had concerns about its weapons.
Television and radio stations and newspapers have been the target of numerous attacks in Lebanon, as have individual journalists, almost always critics of Damascus.