Nabil Dajani critiques the perception that Lebanon enjoys one of the freest media systems in the Arab world, showing how its foundations in confessional politics and business interests prevent it from functioning as a public service, a control on power, or a voice for the voiceless.

Nabil Dajani urges the academic community not to lose sight of traditional and folk media in assessing the role of digital technology in the Arab uprisings, warning that over-reliance on new media platforms to explain the events of 2011 has already led to a failure to understand and anticipate the course of change in the region.

(A draft of this paper was presented at the New Media in the Middle East International Conference for Contemporary Middle East Studies at the University of Southern Denmark in November 2005.) The Republic of Lebanon is a curious, small state situated in a politically unstable region. Currently subjected to confused …

This article was first published in the book "The Mission: Journalism, Ethics, and the World," ed. Joe Atkins, published by the Iowa State University Press, and appears here by kind permission of the publishers. The past decade has witnessed radical changes in the structure and role of television in Lebanon. …