Journalists as messengers of hate speech: The case of Lebanon

Abstract

The term "crisis" has become synonymous with describing the political, social, and economic state of many Arab countries including Lebanon. These continuous crises, including a global pandemic, have manifested in Lebanese news and current affairs through messages of hate disseminating via the media and journalists. Hate speech circulated via airwaves and the Internet has been shown to cause more harm than having hate shared in private conversations. The global pandemic, followed by the Beirut Port explosion in August 2020, has raised the level of hate speech in public, and Lebanese journalists have been used directly or indirectly as tools for propagating hate speech. This reflective account engages Lebanese journalists with the aim of producing a set of guidelines for tackling hate speech in news coverage and current affairs programs. Two workshops were conducted with Lebanese journalists in Lebanon in an attempt to understand the level of awareness of hate speech and its consequences among Lebanese journalists, assess how they understand hate speech, and determine the importance of guidelines and tools in helping journalists identify and tackle hate speech.