Journalists are going the way of blacksmiths and steam-engine drivers. What experts did once can now be done by anyone. Warriors for justice and exposers of corruption whose sword is the newspaper can be found only in the movies today. News broadcasts are counting down to zero. The young abandoned them, the old are bored. Commercial television now will always be tainted by economic and political interests.
The evening news broadcast is on the way to suffering the fate of print news: First to go were the copy editors, then the rewriters and the photographers. When the journalists go, there’ll be no one left to speak for them. There’s no need for them. When they go, we won’t even notice. What you get from the news on television you can get directly from the politicians’ Facebook or Twitter feeds.
Journalists always needed sources, politicians always ran after journalists to get a minute on the news. Today the journalists run after the politicians. Without the connections, the information and the quotes, television news has no reason to exist. For some journalists, it’s the only way they were trained to gather information. They no longer try to expose what the government is trying to conceal from us. Why expose? Why jeopardize their supply pipeline?
The supply comes with a price: loyalty to the point of self-abnegation. They are loyal. They have their ear to the door of the regime and their tongue to its backside. Call them Bibi-ists, fascists, whatever: They don’t care, they have no choice. What is Amit Segal without Bibi’s bureau? They have become spokesmen. Positions such as “government spokesperson” have disappeared because of them. The Israel Defense Forces spokesperson has long since become a part-time worker. When Segal talks about enacting legislative override, we can assume that Bibi is speaking from his throat.
Loyalty has its advantages. It’s important to hear the voice of the government. TV news is our Pravda, and the journalists are clerks in the Government Press Office. They no longer pursue scoops. Why bother? Who are they competing against? Paramedics and lawyers do the job for them. Since Raviv Drucker and the submarine affair, when was the last time you saw an important, exclusive report on television?
To those who complain about superficiality and ignorance, they’ll say: “That’s what the people want,” and they’ll explain that “At home we’re totally Meretz.” In the studio they’re totally Itamar Ben-Gvir. They’ll invite politicians to the studio only because they “look good” or “have a sense of humor.” Miri Regev was in this slot, as was Miki Zohar. And then came Ben-Gvir and buried all of them.
These are the days of the twilight of the profession. Journalists are adapting themselves. The self-censorship is becoming more stringent, the caution in the choice of subjects is steadily increasing. The list of forbidden topics is becoming longer. There are many toes that can’t be stepped on, such as the importing of cement on Reshet and Coca-Cola on Keshet. You won’t see settlers rioting and soldiers beating people up. Not here. Look for them on social media.
On social media they report fearlessly and without bias. There they really do report from the field, without business tycoons and ratings hanging over them. Efficient cameras and an insistent presence in the field have turned social media users into journalists who expose injustices. Without them, you may hear about violence by settlers and soldiers, but you won’t see it. Without them, we would barely know that the prime minister is on trial for bribery; without them, Segal, Ayala Hasson and Sharon Gal would try to convince us that “everything is fake news coming from ‘the left.’”
What do journalists do? They inflate, exaggerate, sit on social media, dig into it in order to find crumbs of content with which to feed the monster with six hours of broadcasting. They work hard on development and inflation, every two incidents turn into a “phenomenon” for them, every tweet into an “uproar.”
Think about someone who chose journalism out of a desire to expose the truth and to condemn injustice. Think about someone who learned to isolate himself from the centers of power, to be skeptical, to crosscheck sources, to request reactions. Today he is still saddled with a mortgage, his children don’t have an apartment. In the morning, he checks his text messages, and in the evening, he declaims them obediently. He is ashamed, he looks around and is happy to see that everyone is doing the same. He bows his head and joins them. He would be insulted if people said he’s becoming a coward.