Hezbollah’s Tyre Meeting: Journalists as Propaganda Tools in the Resistance Narrative

On July 11, 2025, Lebanese journalists affiliated with Hezbollah, who had covered the latest round of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, met with Abdallah Nasser (seen on the left of the picture during the meeting), head of Hezbollah’s First “Jabal Amil” District, in the city of Tyre. During the meeting, which was attended by senior figures from Hezbollah’s Media Department, the journalists expressed their gratitude to Hezbollah for its support on the ground during the fighting. Nasser, in turn, praised the journalists’ work and promised that Hezbollah would soon award tokens of appreciation to everyone who covered the conflict, emphasizing that their media role constitutes an essential pillar of the resistance “against an enemy that does not distinguish between fighters, civilians, and journalists.”

What Nasser neglected to mention is that many Hezbollah operatives during the war did not wear uniforms, but fought in civilian clothing, in civilian areas, cynically employing human shield tactics, including the use of journalists as human shields. At the same time, Hezbollah fighters disguised themselves as journalists and marked Hezbollah vehicles to appear as if they were being used by journalists.

Several media outlets operate under Hezbollah’s media unit that serve as its propaganda mouthpieces. The most well-known among them are the television station Al-Manar, the radio station Al-Nour, the newspaper Al-Akhbar, and the newspaper Al-Ahed. In addition, there are other media outlets and journalists affiliated with Hezbollah who are ostensibly considered independent. Some of these journalists directly support Hezbollah’s military activity, usually by relaying information gathered during their field tours. Many of them, to say the least, do not adhere to professional journalistic integrity, serving instead as full-time propaganda tools within Hezbollah’s information apparatus.

Ali Shoeib, Al-Manar’s correspondent in southern Lebanon, is the most prominent example of a “journalist” who functions both as a propaganda mouthpiece and as an intelligence asset assisting Hezbollah’s military activity (Ali Shoeib does not appear in the photo).