Lebanon

The Lebanese Republic is a parliamentary republic operating under a confessional power-sharing system rooted in the 1943 National Pact and reshaped by the Constitution and the 1989 Taif Agreement. Under Lebanon’s entrenched political convention, the Presidency is held by a Maronite Christian, the Prime Ministership by a Sunni Muslim and the Speakership of Parliament by a Shia Muslim. The 2025/26 SMM review cycle was shaped by Lebanon’s political reconstitution of early 2025: Joseph Aoun was elected President in January 2025 after a more than two-year presidential vacancy, Nawaf Salam was designated Prime Minister and formed a cabinet in February 2025, and Paul Morcos was appointed Minister of Information, succeeding Ziad Makary. The cycle was further shaped by the 27 November 2024 Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, by Hezbollah’s March 2026 military escalation from Lebanon without state approval and the Cabinet’s decision to reassert state authority over decisions of war and peace, and by Lebanon’s wider economic crisis, with the Banque du Liban exchange-rate series standing at LBP 89,500 per US dollar in June 2025.

Lebanon’s RSF press-freedom ranking improved during the 2025/26 SMM cycle, but the media environment remained fragile, highly politicised and economically constrained. In the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked Lebanon 115th of 180 countries with a score of 46.49, an improvement from 132nd and 42.62 in 2025. RSF nevertheless continued to identify serious structural constraints, including the dominance of politically affiliated media ownership, economic weakness arising from Lebanon’s currency collapse and fiscal shortfalls, and intensified restrictions and security risks for journalists since the spillover of the Gaza war into Lebanon and the renewed Israeli offensive in 2026. Lebanon’s media-law framework includes the 1962 Press Law and the 1994 Audiovisual Media Law, but no statute provides outlet-specific editorial-independence guarantees for the state-owned broadcasters and wire service mapped by SMM. The March 2026 Ministry of Information directive instructing official media outlets to comply with the government’s decision to restrict the broadcast of Hezbollah speeches and armed-wing statements, avoid verbatim publication of such material, and stop using privileged terminology such as “Islamic Resistance” except where directly quoted operationally extended executive editorial direction over the official-media sector during the cycle.

The 2026 SMM dataset for Lebanon covers three SMM-mapped media entities, all classified State-Controlled (SC) under the State Media Matrix typology, with two structurally distinct SC sub-architectures within the cluster. Télé Liban, the national television broadcaster, operates as a separately incorporated state-owned company, having emerged from the 1977/78 merger of CLT and Télé-Orient with state participation and become wholly state-owned after the Lebanese state bought out the remaining private shares in 1996, with Dr Elissar Naddaf Geagea appointed by the Council of Ministers in July 2025 as the first woman to head the broadcaster. Radio Liban and the National News Agency (NNA), the state radio broadcaster and the state wire service, both operate as directorates within the Ministry of Information without separate corporate form, with Mohammad Gharib continuing as Director of Radio Liban and Ziad Harfouche continuing in the duties of Director of NNA through the review period. Public reporting of the March 2026 official-media directive specifically named NNA and Télé Liban, while also reporting the directive as applicable to Radio Liban within the wider official-media framework. No SMM-tracked Lebanese entity underwent a classification change during the 2025/26 cycle.

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