By Anas Al-Faitouri

The Libyan case in the media field is subject to constant change, which cannot be confined to the dramatic developments in the political scene alone; however, instead we should realize that a change will be flavoring the media speech soon over the coming period of time stripping it of its bygone major role that only praised the political polarization.  

It was remarkably clear that media, which is still crawling after the revolution - is unable to understand what is happening in the Libyan scene in general. Although the harbingers of change were clear, but media stood aghast mired in the details. It was neither able to investigate nor to approach reality, let alone its lack of ability to aspire for the future, perhaps because of its accelerated nature, or its dependence on transferring of views as a whole more than using information.

In the light of these changes, the media has become, either mouthpieces calling for the return of the security and military state (secular), which is the highest voice, or efforts floundering blindly defending the change by two different visions. One came as reactions to those secular mouthpieces, and the second has the policy of adopting the concept of neutrality for the sake of having access to the views of the conflicting parties in a Utopian way fancying the stability of the scene politically, socially and legally.
It is known that misinformation and lies, the changing of the facts cannot be sustained for a long time.

In Libya, rebuilding the security state project (secular) has stalled and failure is the most prominent feature in attempting a copy of the Egyptian type; that is to say the forces opposed to the return of tyranny are armed forces, who benefited from the Egyptian and Tunisian experiences, but in return they haven’t achieved any projects for the state till this moment.

If the army media continued in the same approach to fool people and its covert and declared war against Islam, under the pretext of (terrorism or Islamists), will be judged as failure with the passage of time, and those in charge will suffer strong strikes. The change in the region is inevitable because of (military state failure, low level of education, and unemployment), and sooner or later people will discover that the media was giving unreal weights to issues and personalities it was hosting. Reliance on media to assess facts has thus become more like watching a movie with a strong production where the state of the dazzling influence ends by the end of the film.
 

It is very important to realize that the media is not independent of political projects, it is also linked to its intellectual background; it relates closely to the question of identity of the state. The media is a tool to express identity. This is the summary of an experience I had in establishing a media project with specialists in this field in mid-2012.

The establishment, conducted on scientific and standard bases, was not supportive of any political project, yet in terms of institutional values, it committed itself to the concept of neutrality in the journalistic work and favored it to all the other values with a commitment to the merits and standards in dealing with the views and positions of the different parties in the Libyan scene.

Once the Dignity Operation began in mid-May of last year, the media project tools dealt with it as a party of disparate parties in the Libyan case, despite the fact that Haftar threw all the outputs of the February Revolution away from the scene and called for freezing of the constitutional declaration.

Our mass media (websites, radios) continued to periodically convey the misleading and false statements by the Dignity leaders in the framework of (their media war), however, all that did not help with the so-called Libyan army. Ajwa Radio was shut down in the cities controlled by Dignity forces (Al-Marj, Al-Bayda and Tobruk) and ended up with an attack on the headquarters of Ain Foundation for Press and Media Studies, and looting its assets in complicity with a pro-dignity media staff. 

Let us now close this page for a while and get back to discussing the future of the media, because it is not a matter of conjuration to say that there would not be a possible emergence of an integrated media project that supports the establishment of the new state, exercise its role as the fourth authority and offers (news, education and interest) unless we develop the idea of a clear and a new state. There should be a political project that contains the society differences and contradictions and is based on identity which should be developed to unite people.

Finally, I conclude with the words of the philosopher Taha Abdul Rahman: “Neutrality is impossible in humanitarian affairs, considering that a human being cannot divest himself from (thought) to enter on the topic (thought about). It is not a shame that humans are naturally biased, but it is important to have bias framed in a clear curriculum where the (thought about) is addressed in the light of clear, debatable and negotiable mechanisms.

 

Disclaimer:  The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Libya Observer

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