PressEthic

When I was in Beirut this summer, a car bomb went off close to my grandmother’s apartment. We hear the dull thud, wondered briefly where it could have gone off, and then decided that it couldn’t have been that bad if the windows hadn’t rattled. In fact, no one was hurt – it was a relatively small bomb, and set off in a parking lot. Plenty of cars were damaged, and all the windows in the vicinity were shattered. My countrymen have learned to hear when the situation is serious, and when it’s not. It’s a horrible way to live, and is directly related to the opposition to Syria that has swept the country.

On Sunday, another car bomb went off. It was set in the car of a Lebanese journalist, and it went off when she turned the key in the ignition. May Chidiac, a popular, well-know journalist and anchorwoman, has lost an arm and a leg. Her crime? Defying the pro-Syrian government and campaigning for a media free from government and Syrian influence.

Chidiac is not the first Lebanese journalist to be targeted for her politics. Samir Kassir, a journalist for the Al Nahar newspaper who also spoke out and wrote articles against the Syrians died earlier this year when a bomb was placed under his car.

Lately, the US has placed Syria under a microscope for its activities and relations to terrorist groups. It was partly due to the support of the US that Lebanon was able to oust Syria after Prime Minister Hariri’s murder. But it was also because the press never quit, never backed down, never stopped talking. Even at the height of the occupation, when people were outright “disappeared” for speaking out against the Syrians, the press was quietly working against the occupiers to educate people and get foreign help.

So now May Chidiac is minus an arm and a leg. Samir Kassir is dead. I doubt they are the last members of the press to lose life or limb for what they believe. Is it worth the price if it means a totally free Lebanon, and a free press? I think it is. But then again, I’m writing this post from my parents’ home in New Jersey, I have all my limbs, and I’m not in imminent danger of death.