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BEIRUT: Lebanon’s parliament should ensure that a draft media law it is considering upholds the right to freedom of expression, 14 Lebanese and international rights organizations urged on Tuesday.

This includes decriminalizing defamation, blasphemy, insult and criticism of public officials; prohibiting pretrial detention in speech-related violations; and removing onerous restrictions on the establishment of media outlets.

The calls come as the parliament’s Administration and Justice Committee is set to resume its discussion of the draft law on Tuesday.

On Aug. 31, members of parliament received proposed amendments to the draft law’s text, which, organizations said, included reintroducing pretrial detention and provisions that criminalize insult and defamation.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International, Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Without Borders, warned the suggested amendments would further restrict the work of media organizations that are subject to a legal complaint by prohibiting them from publishing materials about the complainant while judicial proceedings are ongoing.

They warned that Lebanon’s criminal defamation laws have been repeatedly used to target and silence government critics, activists and journalists in Lebanon, with journalists repeatedly summoned before security agencies for their work.

“Parliament should ensure that these practices come to an end by passing a media law that is entirely consistent with international human rights standards, including on the right to freedom of expression and media freedom,” the organizations said in a statement.

“Lebanon’s parliament should adopt a media law that includes rights protections that Lebanese rights and media groups have long fought for,” they added.

Rights groups, who reviewed the proposed amendments, opposed the reintroduction of pretrial detention, including “under aggravated circumstances, such as infringing on individuals’ dignity or private lives.”

Pretrial detention is only permissible in Lebanon for offenses that are punishable by more than one year in prison. It is expressly prohibited for media-related offenses in Lebanon’s existing media laws.

“If adopted, such an amendment would be a significant step backward for the protection of the right to freedom of expression and media freedom in Lebanon,” the organizations said.

They noted that the suggested amendment does not specify what “infringing on individuals’ dignity or private lives” entails.

“A vague law that leaves people uncertain of what expression may violate it has a chilling impact on freedom of expression, as people may self-censor out of fear that they might be subject to summons, pretrial detention or eventual prosecution,” they added.

“Vague provisions also leave the law subject to abuse by authorities, who may use them to silence peaceful dissent.”

Such a general legislative ban, they said, would constitute “a serious infringement on the right to freedom of expression.”

The suggested amendments would require licensed television stations to provide the Information Ministry and the National Council for Audiovisual Media with regular reports, including detailed information on the schedule of broadcast programming, and imply that electronic media be subjected to a prior licensing regime rather than a notification regime.

“Unless carefully crafted, such licensing requirements risk allowing for arbitrary decision-making over who can establish and operate media outlets and could facilitate violations of the right to freedom of expression and media freedom,” the statement said.

Lebanon’s parliament began discussing a new media law in 2010 after a former parliament member, Ghassan Moukheiber, and Maharat Foundation, a Beirut-based nongovernmental organization specializing in media and freedom of expression issues, submitted a proposal to amend Lebanon’s outdated Publications Law.

In January 2023, parliament established a subcommittee to study and amend the draft media law, a final version of which was submitted to the Administration and Justice Committee on May 27.

The draft law submitted to the committee in May included advances in protecting the right to freedom of expression in Lebanon, including abolishing pretrial detention and prison sentences for all speech-related violations. It also repealed criminal defamation and insult provisions from Lebanon’s penal code and military judiciary law.

The Administration and Justice Committee started discussions on the latest draft media law on July 29 and has held three meetings on the issue.

However, proposed amendments, introduced to parliament members on Aug. 31, were largely opposed by international rights groups for provisions viewed as restricting media freedom.

Rights groups urged the committee to make its discussions public to ensure transparent legislative debates and facilitate effective public participation.

SYDNEY: Australia urged social media platforms on Tuesday to employ “minimally invasive” methods to check the age of users covered by its world-first teen social media ban, which take into account artificial intelligence (AI) and behavioral data.
Governments and tech firms worldwide are closely watching Australia’s effort to become the first country to block use of social media by those younger than 16, starting from December.
“eSafety recommends the most minimally invasive techniques available,” the Internet watchdog said in its guidance for firms to comply with the law passed in November.
Social media platforms are not required to conduct blanket age-verification as firms can use existing data to infer age reliably, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said.
“We know that they have the targeting technology to do this,” she told a media briefing.
“They can target us with deadly precision when it comes to advertising, certainly they can do this around the age of a child.”
She added, “Adults should not see huge changes ... it would be unreasonable if platforms re-verify everyone’s age.”
In July, Grant widened the ban to Alphabet-owned YouTube, following complaints by Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok about an earlier decision to exempt the video-sharing site popular with teachers.
Google and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In February, eSafety said 95 percent of teenagers aged 13 to 15 reported using at least one social media platform since January 2024, but warned that the actual numbers could be much higher.
Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells urged “reasonable steps” by social media companies to detect and deactivate underage accounts, to prevent re-registration and provide an accessible complaints process for their users.
“We cannot control the ocean, but we can police the sharks and today we are making clear to the rest of the world how we intend to do this,” Wells told reporters.
There was no excuse for non-compliance, she added, as the platforms had the capability to do so, ranking among the world’s biggest and best-resourced companies.
Amid concern about the impact on young people’s mental health, Australia’s ban passed into law in November 2024, with companies given a year to adopt it, while facing a December 10 deadline to deactivate the accounts of underage users. ($1=1.4993 Australian dollars)