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Thu Mar 17 14:35:45 EST 2005

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BATTLE OF THE AIRWAVES
Mar 17th 2005  

Why the anti-Syrian opposition is winning the war for hearts and minds

LAST week, half a million people gathered in Beirut to show support for
Syria. This week, perhaps a million others shouted for the Syrians to
go. Street democracy may be working, for now. Syria has abruptly
stopped bluffing, pulled a good part of its army out of Lebanon, and
promised to remove the rest fast. It has also scuttled chunks of the
intelligence edifice that cast a long, dark shadow over its smaller
neighbour. The Syrian-infiltrated Lebanese state is now desperately
casting about for ways to survive the opposition wave.

 But headcounts in the street are not the only thing to weigh against
lingering Syrian control. If the Lebanese are, by the rough tally of
crowd sizes, two-to-one in favour of change, the media greatly amplify
this advantage. "We have no newspapers and only two TV stations," moans
Emile Lahoud, an MP and son of Lebanon's pro-Syrian president. By
contrast, Lebanon's half-dozen other channels tilt strongly or slightly
to the opposition.

 It is not for want of trying that the pro-Syrians' voice is weak. It
was at Syria's behest that licensing rules, introduced in the 1990s,
reduced the number of private television and radio channels from scores
to a handful. More recently, bogus lawsuits pushed by Syria's friends
closed one surviving television station and nearly ruined another. This
tilted the balance of air time more towards Syria--and frightened
potential critics. Even so, the country's educated elite--the kind of
people who work for and talk to the media--came to despise the
corruption and police-state tactics that Syrian meddling has
encouraged. And, to Syrian chagrin, the biggest press patron of all was
Rafik Hariri, the billionaire politician whose assassination sparked
the recent protests. He sponsored his own television channel and
newspaper, and may have spent some $100m over the years, in gifts and
share purchases, to keep dozens of favoured voices from falling silent.

Some accused him of buying off critics. Whatever the case, his
investment is now paying off with a vengeance. Local coverage of his
funeral, of protest rallies and of opposition politicians has been
relentlessly dramatic. The media-savvy opposition, advised by Beirut's
top advertising firms, has been quick to grab the limelight with catchy
banners, slogans and gimmicks. "They have prettier girls," concedes a
Shia village headman.

For his part, Syria's president, Bashar Assad, moans that if cameras
only "zoomed out", the scale of anti-Syrian feeling would shrink to its
true size. He might do well to reflect instead on his country's own
state television monopoly. For hours after Mr Hariri's murder, Syrian
television blithely ran cartoons, followed by a programme on the
glories of Syria's archaeological ruins. 

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/World/africa/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3773839

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