Michel Hajji Georgiou, a senior political analyst at the French-language daily L'Orient-Le Jour in Lebanon, has been awarded the 2007 Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize from the World Association of Newspapers that honours an editor or publisher in the Arab region.
The passing of “one of the last titans of an era that is indelibly imprinted with his name and signature” – a sentiment expressed by his granddaughter Nayla but echoed in the hearts of all who knew him – is noted with particular sobriety by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers given the strong ties between the organisation and the Tueni family from over three decades of close collaboration.
The announcement of the death of Ghassan Tueni, who died in Beirut on Friday, 8th June, after a long battle with illness, was met with a heavy sadness in the pages of leading newspapers and prominent online blogs across the globe.
While the Internet and social media websites have been credited for playing a major role in uprisings across the Arab world, Lebanon's Minister of Information is currently drafting a law that risks threatening Internet freedoms.