“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
In many ways, this quote from Harper Lee’s magnum opus, To Kill A Mockingbird, captures an unspoken truth about the way we consume media. When it comes to the news, our shortening attention spans are largely unidirectional, and the media agenda of Western countries is often dominated by issues that relate to their own foreign policies.
To some extent, this is understandable. However, particularly in a world that sadly seems to have an increasing number of tragedies, this can lead to the media overlooking the plight of certain countries. One such nation is Lebanon, which has been suffering a snowballing series of crises for a number of years.
In 2015, Lebanon was plunged into a garbage crisis after a colossal landfill site was closed down, and the government lacked any contingency plan. As a result, rubbish was directly dumped into the sea and coastal landfills, with the Human Rights Watch classifying it as a ‘national health crisis’.
In 2020, the Port of Beirut explosion reverberated around the world, killing 255 people and injuring 7,000. The resulting damages were estimated to be up to $4.6 billion, with losses of up to $3.5 billion.
However, while these events have received coverage, these occasional snapshots have failed to capture the true, long-term economic crisis and deep-seated corruption that have been plaguing Lebanon for years. Fortunately for the Middle Eastern country, though, it has somebody working to change this - Daizy Gedeon.
Gedeon has been shining a light on injustices since she first set foot in the newsroom of The Australian. Being Lebanese, she has always found herself gravitating towards highlighting the problems the country has been experiencing. In 2021, Gedeon released her critically acclaimed ‘ENOUGH! Lebanon’s Darkest Hour’ documentary, which opened up the challenges being faced by Lebanon to a global audience, and received the ‘Movie That Matters Award’ at the Cannes International Film Festival.
This builds on the success of her first documentary, ‘Lebanon…Imprisoned Splendor’, which received numerous international awards, as well as qualifying for the Academy Award for best documentary in 1998.
“I’ve always been propelled by two driving forces - promoting justice and truth, regardless of where this might be. I read To Kill A Mockingbird when I was nine or ten, and it had a huge impact on me. I felt a great sense of clarity about the direction I wanted to take my life in - to help those who are suffering injustice, and to showcase their problems to a world that often has its head in the sand,” outlines Gedeon.
This journey began in journalism at NewsCorp learning the ropes at esteemed publications such as The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times Group and Channel 4 in London. Gedeon rose through the ranks to become a War Correspondent, which took her across the Middle East to cover a series of high-profile events and interview a number of notorious figures.
Daizy Gedeon subsequently returned home to Australia to start a family. Yet during this period, she offered to temporarily look after her parents’ firm, the GDR Media Group, as they sought to return to Lebanon. But instead of winding it down, Gedeon ended up transforming the company and boosting its turnover by over 500% in her first three years.
From the outset, Gedeon was determined to translate the values she had embodied in her journalism into her entrepreneurship.
Gedeon recalls, “Everybody told me you can’t be both a nice person and a successful businessperson - you had to be cut-throat and ruthless. That was never going to work for me, and to this day I have ensured that the GDR Media Group is synonymous with values that are close to my heart, such as treating everybody with fairness, and operating with openness and honesty.”
This unique approach helped Gedeon to win the GDR Group’s first million-dollar contract, and to establish a turnover of nearly $10 million in her first decade at the helm of the company. She was recently awarded 100 Most Successful Women in Business by the Global Trade Chamber and named Ten Most Influential Women Leaders of 2022 by Industry Era Leaders.
It is alongside being the CEO, Managing and Creative Director of the GDR Media Group that Daizy Gedeon continues her pursuit of justice and truth through her journalistic endeavors. Her ‘ENOUGH!’ documentary is a testament to this, as was her decision to make the risky relocation to Lebanon earlier this year in order to gain a deeper understanding of its people’s suffering.
Lebanon’s GDP plummeted from $55 billion in 2018 to around $20 billion in 2021. Last year, the inflation rate soared to over 154%, and this has continued climbing into 2022. Gedeon’s work highlights how this is the result of a ruling kleptocracy, which has taken from the public and given little in return. A recent report demonstrated that there are only 32 countries in the world where corruption is worse than it is in Lebanon.
Gedeon’s focus remains on using her talents to help Lebanon, but at the same time, she has never wavered from her original mission to aid the cause of justice and truth, wherever that might be. For instance, she has supported movements such as Black Lives Matter and the campaign to introduce equal marriage in Australia.
To return to another quote from the book that changed Gedeon’s life all those years ago - “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…Until you climb inside his skin and walk around in it.” Daizy Gedeon continues to use her journalistic lens and her entrepreneurial influence as a means of doing just this, to help the world understand life from the perspective of those suffering injustices.
