Convincing wine-drinkers is harder than his day job as chairman of the central Europe group for United Pan-Europe Communications, an arm of John Malone's U.S-based Liberty Media.
"From the birth of the Lebanese state, Tripoli has resisted being a part of Lebanon, " said Ahmad al QasQas, a media representative for the Lebanese chapter of Hizb al-Tahrir, a pan-Arab Islamist party with aspirations for one nation spanning the region under the rule of an emir.
The Qatari government set up the Doha Centre for Media Freedom in 2008 to promote press freedom and quality journalism, and is home to the pan-Arab satellite TV network al-Jazeera.