Mona Bechara. (Credit: DR)
Mona Bechara, former editor-in-chief of Magazine, a French-language political journal whose publication has been suspended for several years, died on Friday following a long illness. Daughter of the renowned lawyer Georges Bechara, she held a law degree from Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Beirut but chose to pursue a career in journalism.
Mona Bechara joined Magazine in 1965. In the 1980s, she was the first woman journalist to be elected a member of the council of the order of press editors.
In a press release published on Saturday, the president of the order of editors, Joseph Kossaifi, paid tribute to Mona Bechara, describing her as a “courageous journalist [and] true spearhead of the defense of democratic values and freedom of the press.”
Mona Bechara was “a great supporter of women journalists. She guided some of them, putting her great experience and expertise at their disposal,” Kossaifi added. “With the disappearance of Mona Bechara, a whole page of the Lebanese and French-speaking press is turning. But we always remember her, the symbol of a beautiful era that seems to have passed,” he concluded.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
