The biggest failure in Lebanon’s election was not just General Michel Aoun. Sharing first place with him was a coterie of Western journalists and analysts who, in the run-up to the election, treated us to categorical, disturbingly enthusiastic predictions of an opposition victory. This not only proved badly off mark, but also grossly misrepresented Lebanese reality. While laziness played a role, an underlying factor seemed to be a perverse enthrallment with Hezbollah, both on the part of the journalists as well as the editors back home.

For instance, a May 30 report in London’s The Daily Telegraph confidently declared “Mr Aoun’s party is expected to secure around 30 seats” to go along with Hezbollah and the Amal party’s guaranteed 35 seats, allowing them to secure a majority in the “124 [sic] seat parliament.” Similarly, a May 17 dispatch  from CNN informed us that the “tide was turning … in Hezbollah’s favor,” with the latter “poised to lead Lebanon’s government.” The icing on the cake came in another London paper, The Guardian, when a Beirut-based Western commentator heralded  “the end of the Cedar Revolution.”

On what basis were these sweeping assertions made? It is possible to attribute much of the perceptible mediocrity to laziness. For instance, the Western press corps often uncritically repeated Lebanese opinion poll results ahead of the vote. The polls, we were told, foreshadowed an almost certain win for the Hezbollah-led opposition, so that journalists and analysts assumed this outcome was a foregone conclusion. So much so that today the March 14 victory is routinely referred to as “unexpected”, “a surprise” or “an upset.”
 
Aside from the notorious unreliability of polling in Lebanon, those surveys cited were virtually all partisan – released either by Hezbollah-affiliated “information” centers or pro-Aoun figures. Also, reporters often released these numbers with reinforcing quotes from so-called “academics” who themselves were either partisan or had close ties to Hezbollah. Effectively, Western journalists found themselves, intentionally or unintentionally, disseminating the opposition’s disinformation.

Most journalists made do with this partisan narrative instead of taking the trouble to actually do some serious reporting. They could have probed the complex dynamics, trends and moods in the Christian community, whose outlook would determine the results, in that way better grasping the Lebanese social context as they projected a 30-seat bloc for Aoun. The journalists’ failure to do so showed how disconnected they were from the reality on the ground, since such a large majority was always unlikely. The whole premise of an opposition win rested on the thinnest of ice.

Aside from laziness, there was also noticeable tendentiousness in some reports. First, there was the disingenuously romanticized presentation of Hezbollah and Aoun that uncritically regurgitated their campaign line as seekers of reform against the “corruption and sectarianism” of the March 14 coalition and the Lebanese system as a whole.

For instance, a story by a Western reporter in Abu Dhabi’s The National described Aoun’s movement as one that “typically avoids the sectarian campaign tactics” – an astounding claim given the overt sectarianism that has marked Aoun’s rhetoric, and that of his partisans, since the general’s return in 2005. Similarly, an April 22 story in The New York Times on vote buying managed to name only Saudi Arabia as a country paying money out to Lebanese candidates, thereby implicating March 14 alone, when campaigns on both sides received massive funding from foreign actors.

There was also a form of conventional wisdom at play dictating that any perception of affiliation that candidates had with the United States was – no, in fact ought to be – a “kiss of death.” And so, the “American-backed” March 14 alliance (as it has become standard practice to write) was bound to lose to the more “authentic” voice of the “Arab street”, namely Hezbollah.

The partiality shown toward Aoun and Hezbollah, I suspect, was what really lay at the root of the shoddy reporting by the Western press corps in Beirut. During the Bush years, one could perhaps attribute such mediocrity to the debilitating effects of anti-Bush sentiment. Now under President Barack Obama, with the new buzzword being “engagement”, reporters and their editors may have felt the need to push their own brand of foreign policy.

Take, for example, this phrase from The New York Times two days before the election: “In a sense, it is a debate over the wisdom of pressing Hezbollah openly or trying to tame it through accommodation… Now, with the Obama administration reaching out to Syria and Iran, it seems clearer than ever that the pro-American majority in Lebanon cannot expect Western military support in its goal of disarming Hezbollah. That recognition has energized the Aounist movement, whose leaders say their close relationship with Hezbollah is the best foundation for a move toward greater civil peace.”

Meanwhile, Time magazine’s Beirut correspondent took the next step when he penned a piece “advising” the US on ways to “engage” Hezbollah once it officially led Lebanon’s government. This incomparable observer had apparently already internalized the inevitability of the party’s victory.

Well, no such luck. In terms of reporting, assessment, and unsolicited policy advice, the Western press corps in Beirut performed poorly. This made one appreciate all the more the victory of March 14. One can barely stand to imagine the kind of reports we would have been fed had Hezbollah won.

Tony Badran is a research fellow with the Center for Terrorism Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.