Thursday, December 29, 2011

Training journalists at AUB: Ms. Abu Fadil

You have to read this most fluff piece about Nayla Tuwayni by the director of a journalism center at AUB.  I can't believe how ridiculous it is.  It lacks the basic journalistic standards that students should be learning. She is clearly enamored with the person and with the right-wing publication.  She does not mention that Tuwayni has been widely criticized NOT for being non-traditional but for NOT doing her job: not in parliament nor in the paper.  She does not tell you that she does not write her lousy articles in An-Nahar (which no one bothers to read), and she does not tell you that she does not actually run the paper.  Insiders tell me that Marwan Hamadi and his brother actually run the paper now.  Tuwayni is merely a visitor.  She cites Tuwaynis as saying that the paper gets 30% of the ad revenue in Lebanon but she does not tell you that this was (illegally in the US) arranged by the shady deals of the late Antoine Shuwayri who rewarded the right-wing sectarian Christian paper by trying to place a monopoly on advertisement in the media in favor of right-wing publication.  This trainer of journalism does not tell you any of that.  She casually labels As-Safir as "pro-Syrian" when the paper is much more than that and it has been publishing many articles against the Syrian regime.  As-Safir is more anti-Israel than it is "pro-Syrian" but Abu Fadil is writing for a Zionist audience and only believes in one category: pro- or anti-Syrian.  Such are the complexities of politics for her.  She does not tell you that Tuwayni is constantly mocked in the Lebanese media not because she is a woman but because she does not attend to her job as an MP (she was tagged on the Hariri sectarian list).  She tells you that she marries a Shi`ite (the horrors of horror) but does not tell you that the paper is noted for its sectarian Christian stances and its bigotry against Muslims (and Shi`ites in particular).  Most importantly, she does not tell you that An-Nahar is now irrelevant.