Attached is a letter I sent to NPR about their use of Lebanese quislings as if they were real journalists. Feel free to use it if you think it worthwhile.

Despite my google skills I cannot find the names of the murdered editors.

Contemporary discussion of Lebanese press freedom seems to be about minor trivia in a system that is entirely subservient to the Syrian secret police.
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Dear Ms. Wertheimer:

Sunday morning 10/5/03 you interviewed Ziad Haidar, a Lebanese "journalist" based in Damascus.

As you surely must know, the free lebanese press was annihilated in the 1970's by Syrian secret police/Ba'ath party death squads that operated with impunity inside Lebanon in the period immediately preceeding that country's civil war.

In particular, the two leading moderate democratic newspaper editors/publishers--pillars of Lebanon's multi-cultural society-- were abducted and tortured to death. And unlike the situation in Argentina, where the torturers carefully concealed their crimes out of concern for world opinion, the Syrian death squads actually advertised their unspeakable actions. They dumped the bodies in downtown Beirut so that the marks of torture were plain for all to see. The rest of the press had to chose either flight or collaboration.

And now a generation later, here you are on NPR stepping over the mutilated bodies of those editors so you can interview one of the collaborators. By presenting this Quisling to your listeners as a free journalist you create a grossly misleading impression of Arab society, and you defile the memory of those Lebanese editors who gave their lives for freedom of the press.

Addendum:

Before I could finish composing this letter, you did it again. Bob Edwards interviewed Rami Khouri--an EDITOR in Beirut. No doubt these Lebanese "journalists" are articulate, urbane and seemingly moderate.

And this apparently is sufficient for you to ignore the fact that they serve at the pleasure of those who butchered their predecessors in full view of the world press.

-[x]
Salem, Oregon

In a revealing episode, Italy’s state television network RAI has had to recall its correspondent from Jerusalem after he sent a letter to the Palestinian Authority stressing his support for the Palestinian cause. The journalist, Riccardo Cristiano, explained that, contrary to rumors, his station was not responsible for video of the brutal October 12th murder of two Israeli men by a Palestinian lynch mob at the Ramallah police station. The letter, apparently intended to be confidential, was published Monday in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. (AP, October 18, 2000)

Cristiano asked that Palestinians be informed that it was a rival Italian network, the privately owned Mediaset, that had shot and broadcast the footage. He assured the PA that his network would never act in such a way:[...]