MTV responded to the allegations later in the day, saying that Mahfouz was a holdover from the era of Syrian tutelage in Lebanon and accusing him of having ties with foreign agencies, in an apparent reference to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“Having a correspondent of a Lebanese media company in occupied Palestine could be seen as a [violation] of the law because such an audiovisual practice involves ameliorating the hostile mentality in the minds of recipients,” Mahfouz said in a statement.
The statement concerned a Jan. 19 report by MTV’s correspondent in Israel, Majdi al-Halabi, who interviewed an Israeli expert on the threat posed by Hezbollah to the Jewish state.
An editor at MTV, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Star that MTV’s correspondent reports from the occupied territories just like other local Lebanese television stations.
“He [Mahfouz] is still working as if we were living under the Syrian occupation. All they want is for us to stop our reporting on Syria and stop mentioning in our news that the Syrian regime is killing its people,” the editor added.
According to Mahfouz, the MTV report was not timely and did not cover a particular event in the development of the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese resistance, adding: “It seems as if hostile security agencies had inspired the report.”
The statement quoted Chapter seven, Article six of the council’s guidelines, which “stipulates that media companies should not broadcast anything that might be considered as promoting ties with the Zionist enemy.”
MTV’s lawyer met with a delegation from the council that included Information Minister Walid Daouk to discuss the report, the statement added.
MTV was shut down in 2002 on charges of disrupting relations with Syria during by-elections held in Metn in the same year.
But according to the editor at MTV, closing down a local television station was no longer possible.
“They closed us down in 2002 for speaking up, at the end, they left, but we opened again and we will continue our work,” he added.
Mahfouz responded by saying that the “content of the report was a form of psychological war by the Zionist enemy against Lebanon and the resistance. It also seemed to be a platform to launch threats against Lebanon and the Lebanese resistance.”
“[The council] warns MTV and calls on it to monitor reports by its correspondent from occupied Jerusalem, based on the content of this opinion, until the Cabinet makes the appropriate decision regarding the matter,” he added in the statement.
The editor at MTV criticized the accusation, asking how “an Israeli expert’s statement that Hezbollah constitutes a danger to Israel is against the resistance?”
In an statement from the station, the MTV administration accused Mahfouz, whose term ended last year, of being a foreign agent.
“We suspect that Mahfouz was and still is an agent for foreign bodies who have controlled Lebanon. How can an outgoing president of the council turn into a judge issuing sentences without evidence? Is he now a national standard?” said the statement.
MTV also questioned the timing of Mahfouz’s statement, and added that such accusations are a return to the time when Syrian troops were based in the country.
The station called on the government to rid Lebanon of “figures from the bygone era.”
