The Fox Blog

Another explosion occurred on the 25th of September 2005 in the Jounieh area, north of Beirut. The attempt was on May Chidiac, a well known anchorwoman who has worked at the local LBC television for the last 20 years where she presented the 8:00 p.m. news and hosted political shows. The bomb was detonated in her car, a ranger rover which is now completely wrecked.

International media discuss that she was “Anti-Syrian” or a “sympathizer of the Lebanese Forces”, whose leader, Dr. Samir Geagea has been released a couple of month. This might be the case but first of all, she was a member of the media doing her job and there was no room for her political affiliation in what she did.
By targeting May Chidiac, free press and free speech is targeted, an issue that cannot be accepted in Lebanon, the sole country in the Middle East where the government doesn’t “truly” control the press.

May Chidiac is currently treated at Hotel Dieu de France Hospital in Beirut; doctors reported that she is in a “stable” condition. Although she’ll make it out of this nightmare, she paid an excessive price: she might lose her leg. A physical disability that doesn’t even come close to the wound the accident caused in the mind of the Lebanese people and certainly on her, a wound that might take time to heal.

This is the second time in a couple of month that free press is targeted in Lebanon, the latest attack of this kind of on Samir Kassir, a writer and journalist for An Nahar newspaper, another leading institution of the Lebanese media.

“Don’t’ Kill the Messenger”