YISRAEL MEDAD, ELI POLLAK
The left wing is always “right;” the right wing primitive, abrasive and wrong.
Israeli journalist Kalman Liebskind (R) attends a conference organized by “Makor Rishon” and the Israeli Democracy Institute at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, March 11, 2018 / (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH 90)
The media likes to claim they are the main bulwark protecting our democracy from our governing institutions. Journalists see themselves as heroes as they “speak truth to power,” fearlessly seeking out the foibles, the irregularities and even the crimes of those whose job it is to govern.
The past few months, Kalman Liebskind, arguably the country’s outstanding investigative reporter, has been publishing a series of columns in Maariv on what appears to be an unchecked loophole whereby those possessing unlimited institutional power can, without oversight, make their own rules. He was joined later by Channel 11’s Tsach Shpitsen who also began reporting on the same issue.
As a result, the Likud and right-wing MKs sought last week in the Knesset to establish a commission of inquiry but the move was torpedoed. And how did the rest of the media respond? They mostly criticized the Likud.
Why? Because the institution involved was the Supreme Court.
The justices, oddly enough, are not subject to the normal procedure imposed upon any other official here, whether elected, appointed or employed. Conflict of interest is something to be avoided and all must report conflicts of interest and the consequences are decided by the legal authorities. But no one imposes this procedure on judges. They decide for themselves what is and what a conflict of interest isn’t.
Is this proper? Certainly not. The suggested commission of inquiry was to deal with precisely this lacuna. Someone who protects democracy but defends the justices has some explaining to do. Nevertheless, most assuredly because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is perceived as an enemy of the court, the justices’ shenanigans and improper behavior are to be overlooked.
How many times has any one of us found ourselves disagreeing with something said on the radio or television screen so much that we not only grimaced, not only drew our friend’s attention to it, not only began to argue with the statement but even yelled at the person who uttered the inanity we just heard? We, too, admit have done so. On Tuesday evening, June 23, dozens of people discovered that they could do precisely that but face-to-face with a media personality standing in front of them.
At “The People Are The Sovereign” rally sponsored by the Im Tirzu group, which called to “End the High Court’s Dictatorship”, Amnon Abramovich, accompanied by Amit Segal, both of Channel 12, showed up to “observe” the on goings. Abramovich was verbally assaulted. Called “traitor” and “fifth columnist,” the police felt he needed an escort to make his exit. President Reuven Rivlin felt it necessary to criticize the reaction, declaring that “no one should feel threatened due to his political position”. We note that when former MK Yehudah Glick (Likud) was physically beaten and needed hospital care, the president did not feel the need to comment on it publicly, perhaps because Arabs were the assailants.
Abramovich, as we have often detailed in our columns, has over the years been sharp-tongued and does not find it necessary to always stick to the truth. Among his darts are “Blue and White is just like the Likud, but without criminals with charge sheets,” “Likudniks are natives,” employing the words of the kaddish prayer for the dead in expectation for the fall of Netanyahu, commenting in 1999 that Netanyahu will be but a “footnote” in Israel’s history, and in 2008, we of Israel’s Media Watch complained when he said that in voting for Likud candidates Gila Gamliel, Ayoub Kara and Sagiv Assulin, one would be “putting people in the Knesset one wouldn’t even let into one’s house,” just one example of his racism.
The list of his outrageous epithets is quite long and we wonder what did he expect would happen that evening. True, the scene was discomforting. True, Ecclesiastes teaches us that “the words of the wise are listened to when made gently.” Shouting, although a staple of our media, does not convince people and is not wise and with the media’s assistance, the issue became an “item.” And just in time for Rina Matsliah.
Matsliah found herself in hot water, once again. After being warned about her referring to Likud supporters as a “blind herd” and her blaming haredim (ultra-Orthodox) for being almost the only coronavirus victims, she was suspended for expressing her personal opinion on Netanyahu. During the Meet the Press program she hosted on Channel 12 on Saturday evening, June 20, she announced, without compunction, that “Netanyahu’s supporters are being interviewed and are saying: ‘even if he rapes my daughter, I’ll still vote for him.’”
It turns out that in an April 20, 2016, article in Globes, novelist Etgar Karet related an incident in which he claimed that he was told by a taxi driver that “if Bibi would enter my house through the window at night and rape my daughter, I’d still vote for him.” True or not, that is just one person. A journalist’s report should not be based on the hearsay of one person alone. Matsliah is not an ethical journalist, but the fact that she could bandy such mudslinging as serious opinion for discussion was indicative that anything about Netanyahu goes.
Interestingly, it was only in the previous week that former MK Zehava Gal-On of Meretz was in the KAN studio being interviewed by Erel Segal and Liebskind, who identify as rightists. Liebskind compared Israel and its relationship with the Arab Palestinians as one of Israel being raped. Gal-On took umbrage, voices were raised and she eventually ended the conversation and stormed out. She told Liebskind that such sexist imagery was off limits. Perhaps Matsliah missed that exchange? Or, did she find it amusing enough to use herself?
The 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner journalist Wesley Lowery, who we already have quoted in a previous column, asserts that there is a need “to fundamentally reset the norms of our field… We need to rebuild our industry as one that operates from a place of moral clarity.” The problem arises, however, when that “clarity” is solely set by the journalists and it is their personal opinions that are becoming the news. In this sense, there is a parallelism between the journalists and the Supreme Court justices.
In Richard M. Perloff’s new study, The Dynamics of News: Journalism in the 21st-Century Media Milieu, he views journalism as in an ideological alignment between the social systems and institutions of news and government rather than a sociological one. For him that means that news authority is a form of hegemony and, he asserts, “news is a systematic handmaiden of the status quo, propping up the forces-that-be in subtle, not always coercive, ways”. Since “society needs news, an institution that is indispensable for democracy”, Perloff highlights how news is shaped by indoctrination that is known and unknown to journalists.
Here in Israel, that theory works only one-way: from the leftist media against the political and popular right wing of society. The left wing is always “right;” the right wing primitive, abrasive and wrong. By some miracle though this dictation has not convinced Israel’s majority.
The authors are members of Israel’s Media Watch.
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