BEIRUT: Lebanon said Monday it had submitted a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over an Israeli strike last week that killed three journalists in the country’s south.
The strike early Friday hit a complex in the Druze-majority town of Hasbaya in south Lebanon where more than a dozen journalists from Lebanese and Arab media outlets were sleeping.
The Israeli army said Friday that the strike was “under review,” maintaining it had targeted Hezbollah militants.
Lebanon submitted “a complaint to the Security Council regarding the latest Israeli attacks that targeted journalists and media facilities in Hasbaya in south Lebanon, and the Ouzai area” in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a statement from the foreign ministry said on social media platform X.
“The repeated Israeli targeting of media crews is a war crime” and Israel must be “held to account and punished,” the statement added.
Cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda from pro-Iran, Beirut-based broadcaster Al-Mayadeen, and video journalist Wissam Qassem from Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television, were killed in the strike on the complex in Hasbaya, relatively far from the Israel-Hezbollah war’s main flashpoints.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the attack was deliberate and both he and Information Minister Ziad Makary labelled it a war crime.
Days earlier, Al-Mayadeen said an Israeli strike hit an office the broadcaster had vacated near Ouzai in south Beirut.
Israel launched an intense air campaign in Lebanon last month and later launched ground incursions following a year of cross-border clashes with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group over the Gaza war.
In October last year, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed by Israeli shellfire while he was covering southern Lebanon, and six other journalists were wounded, including AFP’s Dylan Collins and Christina Assi, who had to have her right leg amputated.
Last November, Israeli bombardment killed Al-Mayadeen correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari, the channel said.
Lebanese rights groups said five more journalists and photographers working for local media had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country’s south and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Lebanon complains to UN over latest deadly Israel strike on journalists
https://arab.news/pwxt7
Lebanon complains to UN over latest deadly Israel strike on journalists
- Lebanon submitted “a complaint to the Security Council regarding the latest Israeli attacks that targeted journalists and media facilities in Hasbaya in south Lebanon
Veteran editor Othman Al Omeir honored at UK Parliament
- Othman Al Omeir was awarded the Legacy of Change Medal by the Parliamentary Society for Arts
LONDON: Celebrated journalist and editor Othman Al Omeir was awarded the Legacy of Change Medal by the Parliamentary Society for Arts last week.
The ceremony, held in Committee Room 14, an esteemed space within the House of Parliament usually reserved for significant political announcements, acknowledged Al Omeir’s contributions to media and advocacy.
The assembly was organized by Rebeca Riofrio, chairwoman of the Parliamentary Society for Arts, and brought together leaders from the creative industries.
Among the distinguished guests was Minister for Victims and Violence Against Women and Girls Alex Davies-Jones, who delivered an impassioned speech underscoring the UK government’s commitment to addressing the issue of violence in the arts. Her speech highlighted the importance of advocacy for all artists, echoing the assembly’s overarching theme of resilience and protection within the creative sectors.
Other notable figures such as Joshua Kane and Marine Tanguy were also honored for their impactful contributions to arts and culture.
Born in Saudi Arabia and a British citizen for the past 40 years, Al Omeir has spent decades shaping the Arab world’s media.
He has been closely connected with the Parliamentary Society for the past five years and has long championed initiatives to protect creatives and uphold the integrity of journalism. His presence, alongside influential figures such as Minister Davies-Jones, Princess Katarina of Yugoslavia, Dame Tessy Antony de Nassau, and Lady Paris Smith, underscored his dedication to advancing a free and supportive media landscape.
As the founder of Elaph, the first independent Arabic e-newspaper, Al Omeir sought to break free from censorship and provide a space for liberal perspectives, promoting open dialogue on issues affecting the Arab region and beyond.
Nowadays, he serves as one of the advisers for the Parliament News Magazine, a publication that has gained recognition for addressing critical social issues since 2019.
In his ongoing work, Al Omeir uses his platforms to encourage the industry to work collectively to safeguard its talent, highlighting the pervasive challenges that creatives can face, such as violence and substance abuse.
Reflecting on the award, Al Omeir stated: “To receive this recognition in such a revered space as Committee Room 14 is deeply meaningful. Media is not just about information; it’s a powerful force for justice and societal progress. We must use this influence to protect those who bring creativity and truth into our world, ensuring they can express themselves without fear.”
New study on Saudi online ad-viewing habits released
- Plan to better tailor adverts for consumers in Mideast, North Africa
- Online platforms surveyed include YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat
DUBAI: International advertising group Dentsu has released the results of a new study of the habits of Saudi Arabia and other consumers across five social media platforms including YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.
The “Unlocking the Currency of Attention KSA” report “is the first in the world which specifically looks at the viewing and retention habits of our Arabic MENA audience,” said Ramzy Abouchacra, media practice president, dentsu MENA.
He added that “it’s set to reshape the way we create and disseminate advertising content” in the Middle East and North Africa region.
The study aims to “bridge the gap between traditional measurement metrics and actual human behavior, offering vital insights into how attention shapes advertising effectiveness,” he told Arab News.
To determine human behavior on social media, the study simulated real-world use of social and video platforms using tools including eye-tracking software and brand-recall exercises, he explained.
The results of the study were then analyzed to understand audiences’ attention spans and the impact of advertising content on consumers, he added.
One of the key findings of the study is that an ad being “viewable” does not guarantee it is “viewed.” The former refers to the opportunity for the ad to be seen whereas the latter ensures the audience has actively viewed the advert.
For example, at least 50 percent of the advert’s pixels should be visible in the browser window for a continuous 1 second for images and 2 seconds for videos.
Abouchacra said the shift to attention and impact is aimed at assessing whether an ad is “viewable,” or made available for someone to view. But also whether it is “viewed,” which means “catching the attention of desired audiences and therefore being actively viewed.”
This richer understanding of how audiences behave and consume content allows advertisers and agencies to better tailor their ad campaigns, he added.
Diving deeper, the study found that even though one platform had an average viewable time of 15.1 seconds, ads were only viewed for approximately 33 percent of that time (5.3 seconds). This suggested that the content did not capture the audience’s attention.
For example, if an ad is not interesting, the viewer might decide to step away resulting in the ad still being played, which in turn would make it viewable. However, it does mean it was not viewed because it did not capture the viewer’s attention.
“A reduction in views doesn’t necessarily mean that someone stepped away from a screen, it could also be that a viewer disconnects from the ad or diverts their attention to something else,” said Abouchacra.
He added that this was “particularly common in the era of multi-screen viewing habits — and therefore the content is not absorbed, reducing its effectiveness.”
Overall, social media content in the Middle East and North Africa region had “lower visibility” compared to international markets, but viewed times across most platforms was higher with an average time of 6 seconds versus a global benchmark of 4.36 seconds, he said.
This implies that audiences in the region are more inclined to watch content for longer, even though they may be presented with less opportunities to see it, Abouchacra added.
The report is another step in Dentsu’s commitment to Saudi Arabia with the network being present in the Kingdom for the last 17 years. This year it opened a regional headquarters in Riyadh in addition to the pre-existing office in Jeddah.
In a separate interview, Tarek Daouk, CEO of Dentsu’s recently created Middle East, North Africa and Turkiye operation, told Arab News the company wants to create a “locational and cultural hub connecting East and West.”
This would provide the “opportunity for local clients to expand globally, and international clients to engage with the growth opportunities within the Kingdom and beyond,” said Daouk.
Lebanon says Israel’s killing of 3 journalists a ‘war crime’
- ‘The Israeli enemy waited for the journalists’ nighttime break to betray them in their sleep’
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary accused Israel on Friday of intentionally targeting journalists in a strike on the country’s south that killed three journalists, which he described as a “war crime.”
“The Israeli enemy waited for the journalists’ nighttime break to betray them in their sleep... This is an assassination, after monitoring and tracking, with prior planning and design, as there were 18 journalists there representing seven media institutions. This is a war crime,” Makary said in a post on X.
Lebanese state media said Friday that separate Israeli air strikes killed three journalists in eastern Lebanon and flattened buildings in southern suburbs of Beirut.
“Our correspondent in Zahle reported the death of three journalists in an Israeli raid on Hasbaya,” Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said, adding that Israeli military planes struck at 3:30 am (0030 GMT) near the Syrian border.
Local media reported that the air raid hit a hotel in Hasbaya, around 50 kilometers south of the Lebanese capital.
Separately, in Beirut’s southern Choueifat Al-Amrousieh area, Israeli warplanes “destroyed two buildings and ignited a large fire, and black smoke covered the area,” according to NNA.
“The raid that targeted the Saint Therese area also caused the collapse of two buildings near the Constitutional Council.”
The NNA report of the strikes on Beirut’s south on Thursday came about half an hour after Israel issued evacuation warnings for the Hezbollah bastion following intense assaults the night before.
“You are located near facilities and sites belonging to Hezbollah, which the Israeli Defense Forces will be targeting in the near future,” said the Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee in a post on X that included maps of the locations.
AFPTV footage showed plumes of smoke rising from Beirut’s south following the strikes and AFP correspondents in the capital heard loud bangs.
“Israeli warplanes launched a new strike a short while ago on the Choueifat” area of south Beirut, NNA said, adding later that Haret Hreik and Hadath were also targeted.
On Wednesday evening, Israeli strikes levelled six buildings in south Beirut, state media and AFP footage showed, with Israel’s army saying it had hit Hezbollah weapons production facilities “under and inside civilian buildings.”
On September 23, Israel launched an intense air campaign in Lebanon and later announced ground incursions, following a year of limited cross-border clashes with Iran-backed Hezbollah over the Gaza war.
Since then, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 1,580 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real number is likely to be higher due to gaps in the data.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented at least 128 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023.
Google urged to step up efforts to demonetize climate falsehoods
- Groups said Google needs to effectively enforce its policy prohibiting ads alongside content that denies the existence and causes of climate change
- “Google ads are directly contributing to the spread of outright lies about our planet’s changing climate — with dire impacts,” said the groups in an open letter
WASHINGTON: Civil society groups implored Google on Thursday to rigorously enforce its policy to demonetize environmental disinformation, saying ads placed alongside climate denial content persistently popped up despite the tech titan’s pledge to crack down.
The open letter, addressed to Google chief Sundar Pichai and endorsed by thousands of signatories, comes in the wake of major hurricanes in the United States sparking an avalanche of disinformation and just weeks before the UN COP29 climate summit.
In 2021, Google announced a policy prohibiting ads alongside content that denied the existence and causes of climate change, seeking to ensure disinformation peddlers cannot monetize its influential platforms, including YouTube.
But the letter from a dozen groups, including the Union of Concerned Scientists and tech watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate, said the ads have not stopped.
“We are urging Google to enforce the policy thoroughly and immediately to ensure it is credible, as we see climate change adversely affecting communities right now,” the letter said.
While Google has demonetized some content by the Heartland Institute, a conservative US think tank, watchdogs have continued to find ads alongside its misleading climate messaging on YouTube, the letter said.
It urged Google to “immediately and permanently demonetize Heartland Institute” as well as other outlets that spread climate disinformation.
Nonprofit watchdog Check My Ads, which also signed the letter, said in a report last month that ad exchanges helped three conservative websites, including The Epoch Times, to profit from climate denialism.
Last month, another investigation by the campaign group Global Witness estimated that The Epoch Times generated around $1.5 million in combined revenue for Google and the website owners over the past year.
YouTube has also allowed the monetization of climate denial content peddled by influencers on the payroll of a Russian influence campaign, the environmental group Friends of the Earth said in a report last month.
“Google ads are directly contributing to the spread of outright lies about our planet’s changing climate — with dire impacts,” the letter said.
Google did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
The groups behind the letter said they have requested a meeting with Google’s trust and safety team to discuss the violations of its demonetization policy and were waiting to hear back.
The letter follows destructive hurricanes that slammed the United States in recent weeks, triggering a torrent of misinformation that officials said hampered relief efforts.
The COP29 summit is set to start November 11 in oil-and-gas-rich Azerbaijan, where nearly 200 nations will gather in the hope of reaching a deal to boost financial assistance to help developing countries adapt to global warming.
TikTok’s future in Middle East is ‘about more than just trends,’ says regional general manager
- Creator Summit was attempt to strengthen ties with creators in the Kingdom
DUBAI: Short-form video app TikTok held its Creator Summit in Saudi Arabia for the first time recently in its bid to strengthen ties with creators in the Kingdom.
The platform understands “that creators are the driving force behind our platform’s culture” and therefore aims to empower creators, said Kinda Ibrahim, TikTok’s general manager of operations for the Middle East, Turkiye, Africa, Pakistan, and South Asia.
The Creator Summit featured workshops and panels focused on content creation and monetization. It also hosted sessions to help creators understand some of the platform’s features for creators, such as its mobile video editing tool CapCut and web-based tool TikTok Studio.
The initiative built on TikTok’s “commitment to empowering creators and promoting a safer platform,” Ibrahim said.
TikTok faces mounting pressure from authorities around the world over safety concerns. In the US, the app could be banned unless its parent company ByteDance agrees to sell to a non-Chinese company.
A new independent body in Europe, supported by Meta’s Oversight Board Trust and certified by Ireland’s media regulator, was set up earlier this month to act as an out-of-court dispute settlement body under the EU Digital Services Act.
The body will accept complaints from social media users in Europe about Facebook, TikTok and YouTube over content moderation concerns.
When asked about the measures being taken by TikTok to work with regulatory bodies on safety, Ibrahim said the platform had more than 30 policies in place “developed by experts from a variety of disciplines, and we strive to enforce these rules equitably, consistently and fairly.”
The platform regularly updates these policies and its safety features and employs 40,000 “trust and safety professionals,” she added.
TikTok also moderates content in over 70 languages, including various Arabic dialects, and has implemented specialized moderation teams for issues such as misinformation, Ibrahim added.
TikTok’s popularity has made it the birthplace of internet trends, both good and bad. For example, a TikTok by user Julie Lebron talking sarcastically about dressing appropriately for the workplace went viral, racking up nearly 5 million likes.
In the video, Lebron says: “See how I do my makeup for work? Very demure. Very mindful.”
The catchphrase “very demure, very mindful” took the internet by storm, extending to other platforms like Instagram. Soon enough, celebrities and brands started to hop onto the trend.
You see how Earth looks in space?
— NASA Earth (@NASAEarth) August 15, 2024
It’s very demure, very mindful. Earth looks very cutesy in the solar system. pic.twitter.com/T0EEhPIqSC
“It’s impressive to see how something that started as a light-hearted take on etiquette is now inspiring people to be their most graceful selves, even if it’s just for a quick video,” said Ibrahim.
For her, the trend demonstrates TikTok’s role “as a cultural hotspot where creativity and entertainment meet community.”
In the Middle East region, she added, creators are celebrating their culture and traditions, which is striking a chord with local audiences.
There has recently been a surge in content that reflects local heritage, she said.
Ibrahim added: “Gaming, travel, and cultural events are all exploding in popularity, with hashtags like #GamingOnTikTok and #WhereToEatRiyadh gaining an attraction on and off the platform.”
However, she said: “This is just the beginning,” adding that TikTok expects to see more trends “that celebrate cultural identity and build genuine connections.”
She added: “With more brands leaning into long-term partnerships with creators and the creative economy booming, TikTok will keep being the place where new trends are born and where the community drives what’s next.”
With this in mind, TikTok is “invested in nurturing creativity and supporting creators across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, particularly in Saudi Arabia,” through initiatives focused on talent development and boosting the Saudi digital economy, she said.
In addition to the recent Creator Summit, TikTok ran the Creator Hub program in the region, including Saudi Arabia, with the aim of discovering and supporting new creators.
It has also partnered with INJAZ, the non-profit organization for education and training in workforce readiness, financial literacy and entrepreneurship across the Arab world, to raise awareness of employability and entrepreneurial skills among Saudi youth.
Other partnerships with the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature and the Saudi Pro League will see TikTok create new digital experiences, including a dedicated hub where fans can access exclusive content.
“Looking ahead, we’re excited about the potential for even more diverse and engaging content, partnerships and initiatives in the region,” Ibrahim said.
She added that there is a growing appetite for content that is not only entertaining, but also educational and empowering, adding: “The future of TikTok in the region is about more than just trends; it’s about creating a sustainable creative economy where local talent can shine on a global stage.”
