UBC STUDY TOUR - NEWS OUTLET PROJECT
- Clara Ip
- Apr 20, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 19, 2020
“Diplomacy please”
“Firing blindly”
“Syria return must be supervised by U.N. refugees tell Bassil”
These headlines arose me and my group mates’ interests in people’s situation in Lebonon. As we are seldom put our focus on this issue in the past, Lebonon always gives us an unstable impressions, such as restrictions, conflicts, discriminations and riots. After keeping track of The Daily Star's front page from 11 June to 20 June, we found that their media are extremely politicalized and polarized. It led to the Lebonon citizensunable to voice out their suggestions or feedbacks, and sometimes their speech were intentionally being distrorted by third parties. Most horribly, no one would help them to solve these problems. Based on The Daily Star front pages, we decided to summarise the articles and analyse the news values used every day.
At my first glance of the articles from The Daily Star, I could not help but feel angry at Lebanon's Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. I was so convinced by the editor that the way of Bassil thinking on the U.N. agencies who were willing to help Lebanon just because their intention on turning Lebanon to good account is laughable. Looking at Lebanon's current situation, they were hardly thriving economically and politically. It seemed like very difficult. It is difficult, if not impossible for any countries to take any advantages from a country that can barely feed themselves. Moreover, I also thought that Bassil overreacted to announce an order of freeze on the renewal and issuance of residency permits for the UNHCR staff in Lebanon, when they are just asking questions to Syrian refugees about their preparation for life back in Syria in order to understand refugees' situation.
However, after doing some research, I finally understood the reasons why Lebanon decided to restrict the number of Syrians entering the country and why would Bassil try to minimise the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon leniently. Only referring to the information given in the articles, I did not realise that people in Lebanon were facing a lot of severe problems, such as unemployment and housing crisis. The massive inflow of the Syrian refugees had actually worsened their circumstances. I thought while people were pitying those Syrian refugees and blaming Bassil for convincing Syrian refugee not to go to Lebanon. They should understand that Lebanon had tried their best to take in as much refugee as possible in the past few years with around 1.5 million of Syrian refugee registered in Lebanon.
Through this news outlet project, I understood that we should not judge a book by its cover and trust the information the news outlet give us. Instead, we should do more research, understand the background before we jump to the conclusion. As the reasons behind Bassil's actions were not told, it is very misleading and may cause citizens, and Syrian refugees misunderstood the intention of Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil's actions, especially when these people may not have many resources for them to gather information. With limited information, it is impossible not to be misled as the news outlet did not clarify and expose both sides of the story.
Blog for Study Tour: https://ipwnclara.wixsite.com/clara-ubc-journalism
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