Live-streamed on April 6, 2026.

Zahra Fatima Hankir, Lebanese author and journalist joins to discuss her piece in Columbia Journalism Review entitled: “Who is Left to Cover Lebanon?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yi2OeWpPKk

Check out Zahra Hankir’s article on The Columbia Journalism Review

https://www.cjr.org/feature/who-is-left-to-cover-lebanon.php

The obscuring of Lebanon and its civilians is no accident. For years, the correspondent infrastructure covering the country has been hollowed out. News organizations, most prominently the Washington Post, have chosen to shutter their foreign bureaus, surrendering decades of know-how. (A spokesperson for the Post said that the layoffs were part of a restructuring “designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets the Post apart.”) Outlets such as the Associated Press and the New York Times that still invest in on-the-ground correspondents are in short supply.

To try to fill the gap in moments of crisis, many news organizations now turn to freelancers or send in journalists lacking the language expertise or long-standing relationships with locals. The work of reporters from Lebanon has taken on an outsize importance.

After Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, the IDF responded by invading southern Lebanon, a campaign reportedly long in the making. In the months preceding the escalation in Iran, peacekeepers from the United Nations recorded more than ten thousand violations by Israeli forces of an American- and French-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon.

Since the war began, on March 2, the IDF has displaced over a million civilians. Across the country, shelters are at capacity. More than 1,200 people, including 124 children and 52 health workers, have been killed by Israeli forces. Air strikes have burned farmland and groves of olive trees core to the identity and economy of the region. Human Rights Watch found that Israel has used white phosphorus in southern Lebanon, a violation of international humanitarian law. The intent is clear: Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, has said the IDF is deploying its “model” from Gaza in Lebanon.

Yet Western newsrooms have, thus far, largely framed the story of Lebanon as a sideshow to the war in Iran.