Case Study No.9: Al Jadeed TV Channel Attacked Following a Wave of Misleading News and Heated Incitement

The Samir Kassir Foundation (SKF) is selecting one case of violations against freedom of expression in Lebanon on a monthly basis and analyzing the reaction garnered on its own social media accounts. The aim is to understand the perception of our own social media audience to our reporting and assess the general level of support for freedom of expression in Lebanon.

Our study focuses on a framework that investigates the position towards the victim of the violation, the presence of hate speech, the visible political affiliation of the audience members, in addition to exploring a gender perspective, when available.

In December 2022, SKF covered the attack on Al Jadeed TV Channel’s headquarters. This attack occurred after a segment of Dalia Ahmad’s show "Fashet Khelq" was taken out of context and went viral on social media on December 23. The distorted skit caused a wave of heated controversy on social media that quickly escalated into hate speech and incitement to violence against Al Jadeed and its news anchor, Dalia Ahmad. The situation reached its peak when Hezbollah MP Ibrahim Moussawi and the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council denounced the sketch. As a result, Al Jadeed’s headquarters was targeted in three separate incidents involving Molotov cocktails and live bullets within the same week.

On December 28, SKF’s SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom published a post on its Facebook account. This report analyzes the most relevant comments received on this post during the weeks following its launch. The results are presented below.

Fig.1 - Position towards the victim of the violation

After analyzing 329 accounts, it was found that 84% (272) of them did not support the narrative that portrayed the TV station as a victim of violation. Only 12% (39) of the accounts condemned the attack, and they also expressed their disappointment with the security situation in the country as a whole. The remaining 4% (13) were neutral.

Fig.2 - Use of hate speech

Out of the 329 analyzed accounts, 33.6% (109) added comments that contained hate speech, while 66.4% (215) added comments that did not contain hate speech.

Fig.3 - Commenters’ visible political affiliation

Out of the 329 analyzed accounts, 28.7% (93) were found to have affiliations with Hezbollah, while 6.2% (20) showed affiliations with the Amal Movement, and 5.2% (17) were identified as Free Patriotic Movement supporters. It is important to note that 53.2% (53) of the accounts that used hate speech in their comments were affiliated with these three political parties. These parties have a history of attacking freedom of expression and press, making their involvement in the current situation highly significant.

In contrast, only 1.2% (4) of the accounts had affiliations with the Lebanese Forces, and 0.3% (1) with the Lebanese Communist Party. These accounts took a sympathetic stance towards the TV station and expressed disappointment with the misleading campaigns launched by pro-Hezbollah accounts and their allies.

The remaining 58.3% (189) of the accounts showed no clear political affiliation. However, a significant portion of this category, 51.3% (56), posted comments containing hate speech. Most of these accounts repeated the discourse used by the Hezbollah and Amal Movement-leaning accounts.

Fig.4 - Commenters’ visible gender

Out of the 329 analyzed accounts, 63.5% (205) were male and 35.3% (114) were female. There were also 4 accounts that did not have a visible gender. It was found that 68.8% (75) of the accounts that posted comments containing hate speech were from male contributors, while 31.2% (34) were from accounts identified as female.

This report was made possible through support from the UN Democracy Fund.