The headquarters of the al-Jadeed channel in the Cola district, south of Beirut. Photo taken from social media.
BEITUT — Hezbollah MP Ali Sherri announced he will boycott the local TV channel al-Jadeed (also known as New TV), following a recent controversy over a program that criticized the construction costs of the mausoleum dedicated to the party’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
As a journalist from the channel, Halima Tabiaa, tried to interview him after he voted at a polling station in Beirut, Sherri (MP for Beirut II) refused to respond. "I know you, I know your moral and political commitment, but I will not speak to al-Jadeed,” he said. When the journalist pressed him to comment "as a representative of the nation," Sherri replied, "I have expressed my position regarding the channel."
The controversial segment about the mausoleum aired during a talk show hosted by Josephine Dib and was reportedly not produced by al-Jadeed. The program claimed that "tens of millions of dollars" were spent on acquiring the land and building Nasrallah’s mausoleum, while many Hezbollah supporters whose homes were destroyed in the last war with Israel have yet to be compensated. Hezbollah’s channel, al-Manar, condemned the report as "nine minutes of polite incitement" disguised as investigative journalism. Another Hezbollah MP, Ibrahim Moussawi, called the report a "qualified crime" and urged the judiciary to take immediate action.
Following the airing of the report, 34 al-Jadeed employees said they feared for their safety in a letter to management.
In previous years, al-Jadeed’s headquarters in the Cola district of Beirut have been attacked multiple times, often following reports critical of political parties from across the spectrum.
