This is a conversation with Lara Bitar, the founding editor of The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization “dedicated to reporting on socioeconomic and environmental crises afflicting Lebanon since the onset of neoliberal governance in the 90s, and providing political commentary on events unfolding since  October 17.”

We spoke about the importance of independent and critical media in Lebanon today and about the aftermath of “this brief moment of euphoria that a lot of people experienced during the October 17” uprising, and particularly since the August 4th explosion in Beirut.

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Music by Tarabeat. Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

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Transcript via Antidote Zine:

We are anticapitalists and anti-imperialists; we strive to forge bonds with the communities and struggles we report on, and we try to be as diligent as possible while doing that work.

Lara Bitar: Hi, my name is Lara Bitar and I am the founding editor of The Public Source.

Joey Ayoub: We’ll be talking about a number of things; obviously we’ll be talking about The Public Source and how it came about in the momentum of the October uprising/revolution. Since then you guys have been doing a lot of interesting stuff. So to kick off this conversation, I’ll first ask about The Public Source, and then I’ll ask you more personal questions, if that’s okay. 

How did The Public Source start? What’s the genesis behind it?

LB: A lot of people think The Public Source was born out of the October popular uprising, but it wasn’t. We were already working on this project months before October 17, and the main idea behind it was we realized there was a need to have an independent media organization based in Beirut that’s primarily operated by local journalists and editors who have a deep understanding of the situation. 

Our main focus initially was investigative journalism; that project was on hold for a little bit as we were pursuing different stories, and we’re hoping to kick that off in the coming weeks. But when the October 17 moment happened, we felt the need to respond to these events unfolding in front of us, so we launched the platform with something we called “Dispatches from the October Revolution,” which was a section dedicated to commentary, analysis, and reflection from people who are engaged in different struggles. 

We made a list of topics we were most interested in. The way the site is sectioned is quite different from a traditional media organization or a traditional paper; we don’t focus on news; we don’t report on what’s happening on a daily basis. But there are key issues and topics we are interested in investigating, and at the same time agitating for or against.

I’ll give you a couple of examples. We focus a lot on topics related to capitalism and neoliberalism; we are also very keen on talking about labor and the role labor played in the uprising and otherwise—the different types of organizing taking place, and some of the challenges. What does solidarity look like? What does it mean to have a network based on mutual aid? Of course, agitation and mobilization is one of the key issues we’ve tackled with our dispatches. And we’ve continued to branch out in a lot of different places, tackling a lot of different issues. 

Going back to the primary idea of conducting investigations into the different crises the country has been enduring over the past three or four decades, on our platform we host a couple of different whistle-blowing tools. One is SecureDrop, which is a little bit more complex to use; the other is Wire, which is an app that anybody can download on their phone. We wanted to give potential whistleblowers, or people with information they believe is in the interest of the public to know, a way to share information or documents in a secure way and anonymously. “Sarreb (Ya Sha3bi)” was added and inspired by the October moment. Sarreb is a whistleblower platfom we hope will eventually help us contribute to processes of accountability, once people get more acquainted with The Public Source and the kind of work we’re doing. 

Beyond “Dispatches,” the whistleblowing platform, and eventually the “Chronicles of the Crisis,” which are the investigations, we also have “Comictern,” which is a platform for politically-charged fictional and non-fictional comics. We launched our first comic during the lockdown, called “Karantina;” it was a look into life under quarantine. Right now we’re working on a couple of different coming strips; one will be called Al-Murasila, and is almost done.

Beyond the content you can see on the site, the structure of the organization is very essential to how we operate and a key component of the organization. We were founded on principles of non-hierarchy, voluntary and temporary association, and mutual aid. Once a new team member joins, within three months, if everything is going well and the person is interested, they can join our collective, which runs The Public Source. That means they will have equal decisionmaking power and will be consulted on all editorial and non-editorial decisions we take. 

Anybody is privy to where we get our funding from and how it’s being allocated. At The Public Source we believe labor should be compensated fairly, so we’re very transparent about that as well. Whether you’re reporting as a journalist or writing as an author, you should be compensated for that labor. This is just a small glimpse into our structure and how we operate; I think it’s very clear that our editorial policies and direction in general is left-leaning. We are anticapitalists and anti-imperialists; we strive to forge bonds with the communities and struggles we report on, and we try to be as diligent as possible while doing that work.

JA: How have you seen the October uprising impact your work? And more recently, the devastating explosion we saw in Beirut—how has that been impacting your work?

LB: It’s been challenging to say the least. Anyone you talk to in Lebanon will share variations of the same story. It’s impossible to plan, it’s impossible to have long-term goals, because every single morning we wake up and it’s a new reality; we are confronted with a new situation and new things to deal with. It’s the same for The Public Source. I’ve had to redo our editorial planning four or five times; every time I think our editorial calendar is set for the coming months, we’re thrown a curve ball—just like everybody else who’s working and moving in this country. 

But it’s also been very rewarding. We had a soft launch a few months before—it was truly a collaborative effort that made this project come together; we consulted a lot of different journalists and organizations; we knocked on the doors of so many people we respected to share this idea with them and get feedback. We consulted with community, people who are part of movements, to be able to make this project come together. It was very important for this process to be as collaborative as possible, because we reject the top-down approach. We try to do that in our work, and in the work that happens in the background.

JA: Your role within The Public Source is as an editor, right?

LB: Yes, I’m the editor of The Public Source, which means I do a lot of the stuff that’s not very fun: a lot of the paperwork, a lot of the fundraising. Obviously editing, that goes without saying. But I’m the person who put this vision together and helped materialize it. I’m not a journalist (though I’m often mistaken for one), or a reporter. A lot of my work consists of commissioning articles, thinking of what should be covered, and from which angle. 

Granted, we work with established authors, but we also work with young and inexperienced authors, and our editorial process is one that’s built on care: there’s a lot of back-and-forth, we do several rounds of revisions. I’m not the only editor on the platform; there’s a couple of others. One editor who’s working with me now is Sintia Issa; we developed what I call a “practice of care” in our editing process. We’re in touch with authors: we have long phone calls, we refine ideas together, and we’re part of the writing process as well. 

That’s what I do at The Public Source: a lot of the strategic planning, long-term vision-setting, and making sure on a daily basis that the values we set for ourselves are being respected. We hold ourselves to a very high standard. And of course we make mistakes, and we will continue to make mistakes, but we aspire to hold ourselves accountable to a much higher standard than is usually accepted in this industry.

JA: One of the first episodes of this podcast was with Banchi Yimer, a former domestic worker who lived in Lebanon for almost a decade, and founded (alongside other Ethiopian migrant workers) this group called Egna Legna, which works with migrant domestic workers in Lebanon and Ethiopia. One of the ways I found out about her was through The Public Source, and it gave me a very good indication of the angle The Public Source was going to take, even back then. The first article she wrote was in February or something. I genuinely appreciate that you guys linked up the Lebanese revolution with the need to tackle the Kafala system.

LB: Definitely. Banchi’s piece is a prime example of our ethics and principles, and how we adhere to them. Now it’s much more common to hear people speak against the sponsorship system, Kafala. People are much more aware of how cruel and inhumane it is. But when we were looking to commission a piece on the topic, it was very important for us to have somebody who has experienced and lived through and survived this cruel system, to be able to articulate what her experience was like and to speak against it. And she spoke against it very forcefully.

Banchi later wrote a second piece, during the coronavirus lockdown. She was one of the first people to warn of the starvation we later saw happening to migrant workers who were thrown out on the street by their employer-sponsor. Very early on, she was warning that there is a potential of that happening, and later we saw it occur as she had expected. So these types of perspectives are very important for us to give space to and treat respectfully, and to continue to.
JA: In terms of coverage by the mainstream media in Lebanon, the main newspapers and the main outlets: what do they tend to do wrong even when they’re well meaning? Individuals might be well meaning, but are there angles they don’t focus on enough? What are issues they don’t highlight enough? What don’t they investigate that outlets such as The Public Source can do and will hope to do in the near future?

LB: That’s a super broad question, because there’s so much to critique in the local media landscape, and in the foreign organizations that operate in Lebanon. It would be hard to pinpoint to just one issue. What The Public Source tries to do, especially in these investigations we’ve been pursuing over the past few months, is pursue stories without a political agenda. The mainstream media organizations in Lebanon have on many occasions done good reporting, solid investigations, but they’re always bound by the political agenda of whichever political party or figure is funding them. That’s a key difference in how we operate as opposed to, let’s say, Jadeed or any other TV channel that does similar types of investigations.

JA: That’s a good point. I’ve found it difficult to explain even to myself, let alone to other people, how the media system functions in Lebanon. As you mentioned, there are occasionally decent investigations that are done. We are relatively lucky in that respect compared to some of our friends in the region, obviously. But the limitations can be pretty glaring, and one thing I appreciate is that from what I can tell, The Public Source is actively trying to be self-aware. I guess this is in what you mentioned about the practice of caring.LB: Sometimes we are a little bit too self-aware. The process is very tedious; every piece passes through a number of people, translators, copy editors; we discuss them in editorial meetings. It’s a long and tiresome process we’ve committed ourselves to in order to ensure we are meeting the standards we set ourselves. 

But I’ll touch briefly on the question you were asking earlier, and try not to be super reductive (it would be hard to talk about the media landscape in Lebanon and do it justice in just a few sentences). A lot of the reports you see on television on channels like LBC or MurrTV, some of the top shows that are broadcast late at night, tend to be very exploitative and sensationalist. Even when they’re highlighting an issue that might have some worth and could be presented in a particular manner, it’s done in a manner that’s very unethical; it borders on vulgarity. It’s crude. It’s meant to exploit the tears of someone who lost a beloved; it’s just meant to satisfy a particular audience that wants these types of sensational stories with a lot of scandal and plots that are a little bit outlandish. It’s like watching a movie, not a report on real grievances and issues happening in the country. But that’s what sells. 

Our articles are long, and I get complaints: It’s too long, I couldn’t read all of it, too much is going on right now! Why don’t you write shorter articles so we can understand what’s happening without needing to spend so much time? Of course I take these comments into consideration, because if our material is not being read then what’s the point? But at the same time in order to do these stories justice, we have to go into some depth. These are not 10,000-word articles. They are for the most part between 1,200 to 2,000, sometimes 3,000 words. But we really feel we need to be able to explore these topics in much more depth in order to be able to understand how to resolve some of these issues, in order to elevate the types of conversations we have—whether it’s about environmental justice or about migration and displacement, about infrastructure. Any of these issues that matter to us, we feel the need and an obligation to do justice to them. 

Over the next few weeks and months, we’re going to be experimenting with different ways of tackling some of these issues: short videos, more photo essays, a few more visuals we hope will be able to captivate the reader and convince them this is a text worth reading and worth investing a few extra moments in.

The infrastructure of the country is collapsing in front of our very eyes, and we’re sitting in the middle of it watching helplessly. It feels like no matter what we do, eventually we are going to get swept away.

JA: Even if we forget the October uprising and the couple of months after, how would you describe the level of difficulties people living in Lebanon have been going through? As of now, we’re in mid-September; it’s been a month and a half since the explosion. Since then there’s been three or four fires (which has been mind-boggling in itself), and this is in addition to the global pandemic of COVID-19 and the economic crisis which preceded October and has since worsened since 2020. 

To start to work in that context is extremely challenging to say the least. Maybe this is a subjective question: how are you coping with this? For those who may know the headlines but not much more, what can you tell them about these past few months?

LB: Sure, I’ll answer the first question first, about us specifically. When we were conceptualizing this project, we anticipated this moment. Of course we could have never have imagined there was going to be an explosion of this magnitude, nor did we predict there was going to be a popular uprising. But there were a few things we knew for certain, and that deep financial crisis potentially leading to economic collapse was a near certainty. We wanted to anticipate that moment and be able to report on its ramifications, how it’s impacting people materially and otherwise, and also to attempt to hold those in power responsible for the catastrophic state of affairs in the country. 

For example, we knew there were going to be harsh austerity measures imposed. This is pre-WhatsApp and the conversations that happened then. Everybody who was following what was going on in the country knew this was to be expected. I spent almost six months churning out proposal after proposal, writing grant after grant, making the case for this project, it’s value, it’s worth at this particular moment, and the role it could potentially play. 

We’ve only been out for a few months and we are nowhere near our potential. But we’re growing gradually, and very steadily. Because of all of that, there was no way for us to just throw our hands in the air and say, Oh, this is so difficult, we’re going to take a nap for a few months and then get back to work. We had to continue doing this work we thought was essential; we had to constantly be refining it and revisiting what our priorities were and what our focus should be on. 

As for Lebanon in general, this past year since 17 October 2019 has been incredibly difficult on all fronts. Like I was saying earlier, every morning you wake up to a new reality. Since the blast on August 4, it’s felt like the entire city is in a daze. No one’s okay. No one’s putting up façade anymore. In the first two or three weeks after the blast, when you’d ask anyone on the street, any friend or any family member, How are you doing? the answer was always the same: I’m not okay. People would just nod in agreement, but not really know what to say. 

And because we’ve been hit by incident after incident since the blast, whether it’s fires, or the constantly reccurring garbage crisis, or clashes between different political parties, or rumors of a looming security situation—reports of the return of assassinations and bombings—or power cuts, electricity cuts: the infrastructure of the country is collapsing in front of our very eyes. And we’re sitting in the middle of it watching helplessly. It feels like no matter what we do, eventually we are going to get swept away. 

Really that’s how it’s felt. Every day is a new challenge that’s presented to you. We haven’t had the chance or the space to properly mourn after August 4. I don’t know anyone who’s had the chance or the space to process what happened. A lot of people are still under shock. And we can’t discount the thousands of people whose homes were destroyed, people who have been rendered homeless, people who have lost their businesses, people who have lost loved ones—and the ruling class is still operating as if nothing has happened. 

It’s business as usual. It’s fights over who gets which ministry. The loan from the World Bank was halted, but they’re still pursuing projects like the Bisri Dam. It felt like a huge slap in the face to have had this catastrophe happen and for the ruling class to continue to operate the only way it knows how to. It feels really surreal to be going to work and doing normal things. Now it feels like there’s a slow and gradual return to “normalcy,” people going to bars and restaurants, socializing and doing things we used to do before August 4. But at the same time, no one is okay. 

I guess that’s all I have to say about that. It’s difficult. This brief moment of euphoria that a lot of people experienced during the October 17 moment has evaporated. Some of the organizers and activists who were at the forefront of that movement are trying to leave by any means possible, for example to pursue an education even though they graduated from college fifteen years ago: I will get a Master’s, I will do anything as long as I can get a visa out of this country. It’s a hellhole, really. Constant, neverending interruptions to life in general are relentless. One day, there’s a strike here and a strike there, and not strikes that are to our advantage. These are strikes engaged in by companies that have a monopoly over a certain product or a certain service in order to raise their prices. One day you have to run to fill up your car with fuel, because maybe the next day or the day after you won’t be able to do so. Bakeries going on strike, gas stations. Every day it’s something.

JA: Thanks for answering. I did an episode right after the Beirut blast with Lina Mounzer. It was immediate, three days after. The I am not okay is something that strikes me as very overwhelming. I recently finished writing an essay (that will be up on Mangal Media at some point) going into the notion of resiliency, and whether it makes sense to talk about it or whether we are just broken and need to recognize that. 

It’s a personal thing. I’m not making any argument for or against or anything. But for every single person I know in Lebanon—Lebanese or non-Lebanese, and including many Lebanese who are abroad—there is a very distinct feeling of exhaustion and PTSD, and that’s in addition to anything else they may have already been dealing with before August 4. 

I really appreciated, when Lina was on, that she said—point blank—that these guys are not going to get any accountability. Of course she’s right, and we knew this. There was a moment of hope, and I didn’t want to crush anyone’s hope, but I did feel from the beginning that nothing is going to happen to these guys. I’m not surprised, unfortunately, that even some organizers and frontline activists are trying to leave. I’m not surprised, and I don’t blame them, obviously. I am talking from Switzerland.

LB: I just wanted to add one thing on that point. Not only will no one be held accountable, but the feeling I’ve had ever since the blast is that those of us who survived are faced with attempted murder on a daily basis. The state is trying to kill us slowly in a variety of different ways: pollution, expired food products, expired medicine, the condition of our roads. It feels like on a daily basis, our lives are under threat, and that feeling is shared by a lot of people who lived through the blast and who feel a sense of desperation. Surviving it does not mean this is the end of the war they’ve been waging against us over the past few decades. This was maybe a momentary acceleration of the war, but the slow war continues as it has for so many years. 

Based on the conversations I’ve had with friends and acquaintances, the feeling of not knowing whether you will make it out alive at the end of the day is shared by many people. I was talking to an author I was commissioning a piece from this morning, and we were setting the deadline in two weeks, and then we left off the conversation by saying, Well, if we live another two weeks, then yes, that would be the deadline. But there’s no certainty we’re going to continue to survive in the near future; our lives could be lost in the blink of an eye for whatever stupid and insignificant reason. 

I’ve always felt that way, but now even more so: our lives are so worthless, so completely meaningless. For the almost two hundred people who were killed—and they were murdered, they’re not martyrs; these people were murdered by their own state—there was no remembrance, no honoring of their lives. It’s as if they were never here. Some of the posters and images people put up, probably family members and loved ones: I was thinking the other day that they’re going to be swept away with the first rainfall, and with that the memory of these almost two hundred people who died will be completely erased from our collective memory. And that just makes me feel my life has no value and no worth.

JA: There is a writer who describes the postwar era since 1990 as “the second phase of the war.” And I understand what he means by that. It is more accurate at this point to stop saying we live in a “postwar” society. It’s been meaningless since they announced it. This isn’t even the first time the missing are not being found on purpose. We have those from the war. I spend a lot of time interviewing and speaking to families of those who have been disappeared, and we’ve developed an entire lingo, an entire vocabulary as a society—either as a coping mechanism, a denial mechanism, or a combination of the two—that has made it even more difficult to describe what’s happening, even when it’s happening in front of us. 

August 4, 6:08 p.m., for me was a moment where I asked myself how this will be a repetition of previous explosions, or previous bombs, or previous seismic events of this sort that have taken so many lives so quickly. Unfortunately, I could name a few. Of course they were of a different nature in the sense that these other ones were military attacks, whether by a foreign power or by militias, whereas this was not a direct attack. But as you said, this is still an attack. I agree on calling this attempted mass murder. Since then it’s also been a series of attempted murders. 

Words fail me, to be totally honest with you. At this juncture in time, where we are right now in this moment, words have reached their limit. I don’t know how to describe the same thing over and over again.

LB: At this point, it’s either them or us. There is no way we can continue to “co-exist” the way we have been, because these people are out to kill us. They’re out to get us, and unless we elevate our type of resistance and the types of actions we engage in, we’re going to lose this battle—but this time the consequences of the loss are going to be much more brutal and deadly. Right now we’re confronted with the very harsh reality that unless we take decisive and collective action to push back and resist, it’s essentially become a fight for our lives. Because if they continue to rule this country the way they have been, it’s impossible for us to live with any dignity, without even the most basic needs met. We were talking before about the crumbling infrastructure of this country, whether it’s the health sector or the education sector: everything is collapsing around us. 

Right now we’re faced with two scenarios: either we turn against each other (which I think is the most likely), and people fight each other in different geographies or on a sectarian basis, or we unleash all of our power and all of our rage against this ruling class. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there are any prospects for the second scenario to happen. People are already starting to turn on each other, and it’s become a question of survival. We’re in a constant state of survival mode.

JA: What are some things that listeners can expect from The Public Source in the near future that you guys are already working on? And how can they get involved and support? What should they know about?

LB: We’re very excited about a series of investigations my colleague Kareem Chehayeb has been leading on called the “Chronicles of the Crisis.” These have been in the works for a few months, and over the next few weeks we’re going to start publishing them. We’re very excited about that development. 

I’m very excited about a short video we’ve produced, hopefully the first of many. These short clips will be documentary-style, meant to do some type of immersive storytelling. We’re starting small and experimenting with these types of videos. We’ve produced two so far: one in Burj Hammoud on the landfill, and another one on the aftermath of the Beirut explosion.
As far as how people can support us: just read our material, share it. If you’re outside Lebanon and you’d like to donate, we have a donation page. If you have an uncle or an auntie or a neighbor who works in a government administration and they have access to potentially interesting documents or information, just relay to others that we have a whistleblowing platform and that people can share vital information with us and we won’t even know their identity. Not even we are able to know who is sharing this information with us.

Otherwise, thank you so much for hosting this conversation, Joey.

JA: No, honestly Lara. It’s been my pleasure. Take care of yourself. This is already extremely difficult to deal with, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken to speak with me.

LB: Thank you so much, Joey. It was lovely being on your show.