| L'Orient Le Jour | |
| Type: | Daily newspaper |
| Format: | Broadsheet |
| Owners: | Former minister Michel Eddé and his grandchildren (38%), the Choueiri group (22.7%) and the family of the former minister Michel Pharaon (15.49%). Libano-Suisse Insurance Consulting has 0.2 percent. (and others) |
| Headquarters: | Beirut |
| Political: | Liberalism |
| Language: | French |
L'Orient-Le Jour (English: The Orient-The Day) is a French-language daily newspaper in Lebanon. Its English-language edition is L'Orient Today.[1]
L'Orient-Le Jour was first published on 15 June 1971, following the merger of two French language Lebanese dailies, L'Orient (founded in Beirut in 1924 by Gabriel Khabbaz and Georges Naccache) and Le Jour (founded in 1934 by Michel Chiha).[2]
Between 1970 and 1975, one of the contributors was Samir Frangieh.[3] During the Lebanese Civil War, the paper was closed down by the occupying Syrian Army for a brief period in 1976,[4] and the paper resumed publication after. The editor-in-chief of L'Orient-Le Jour, Eduard Saab, was murdered on 16 May 1976.[5]
The paper won the Grand Prix de la Francophonie from the Académie Française in 2021. L'Orient-Le Jour journalist Caroline Hayek was awarded the Albert Londres Prize for her coverage of the 2020 Beirut explosion.[6]
The paper covers politics, local and international news, finance and economics, culture, entertainment as well as sports.[7] According to the Arab Press Network, an offshoot of WAN-IFRA, it is the most widely read Francophone daily newspaper in Lebanon and is "partisan to a liberal, Christian leaning line."[8] [9]
L'Orient-Le Jour takes a fierce line against Hezbollah, and also against elite corruption in Lebanon. It was one of the few Arab news outlets to say that the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel was an unjustifiable massacre. Topics that are still taboo in Lebanon, such as homosexuality, domestic violence, suicide and abortion, regularly appear in its columns.
The main shareholders of L'Orient-Le Jour are former minister Michel Eddé and his grandchildren (38 percent), the Choueiri group (22.7 percent) and the family of the former minister Michel Pharaon (15.49 percent). The latter's shares are distributed as follows: Pharaon directly holds 2.6 percent of the shares, his sister, Nayla De Freige, holds 1.7 percent, the Pharaon Holding SAL has 11 percent and Libano-Suisse Insurance Consulting has 0.2 percent.[10] Not all shareholders have been made publicly available, which represent 23.8% of the ownership.[10]