Hezbollah’s non-governmental telephone lines are not an integral part of their media broadcasts. No one in the Lebanese government ever mentioned shutting down Hezbollah owned Al Manar TV and no one tried to pressure Iranian funded and pro-Hezbollah Al Akhbar newspaper.

I do not see how the government decision has anything to do with media censorship, or even the censorship of private and personal narratives. The Lebanese government should regulate telecommunications in Lebanon, and Hezbollah and its supporters should use the same telephone system as everyone else.

At present, Hezbollah is discriminating against all other Lebanese by not allowing everyone to use Hezbollah’s private network. They are siphoning money from the state telecommunications network for their own benefit. I hardly see how this has anything to do with media censorship.

censorship is a serious matter, but there is a difference between state censorship of the kind practiced by prime minister siniora and the shutting down of state media by opposition coalitions. what is “tragic” is not that al-akhbariya/futures media lost their bldg and their archive; what is tragic is that a political problem was “worked out” in the streets and people lost their lives. in future, Index on Censorship should fact check these articles and be sure that the whole story is told rather than a partisan version which only intensifies polarization through misinformation, a tragedy indeed.