Save Israel's Self-censoring 'Free Press' - From Itself
Every few months, generally in Tel Aviv at Tzavta or the Cinematheque, Israeli journalists gather for an "emergency meeting" to "save the free press."
The meetings are attended by television personalities, their editors and managers, and other journalists. The high priestess, Ilana Dayan, always delivers pointed remarks, and everyone leaves with the feeling that they are fighting the good fight for democracy. It happened again on Tuesday. "Without a free press, there can be no democracy": words that are both beautiful and true. Dayan said the D9 bulldozer is galloping without brakes and that we have never been in this horror movie before.
Hundreds of Israeli journalists, representing radio stations, newspapers and TV channels, attending an "emergency conference" on freedom of the press on Tuesday.Credit: Moti Milrod
It is all true. The D9 is plowing forward and the media is in danger. A visitor might even get the impression that a brave and subversive media is fighting for its very soul, its existence and its freedom. How easy it is to rage against Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and MK Galit Distel Atbaryan; how hard it is to look in the mirror. The media came to the conference with the most egregious mark of Cain in its history on its forehead, but this was not acknowledged. But with such a stain, the media have no right to fight against the government.
The greatest blow to responsible freedom of _expression_ comes from the media itself. It is not the government that silenced it during the past two years: The media silenced itself, and there was no opposition from inside. The media willingly censored itself; it mobilized to conceal the truth, out of fear and commercial considerations, in order not to annoy its customers.
Self-censorship is more dangerous than any government or military censorship because no one protests it. Nor was there protest against the coverage of the war in the past two years. Everyone is happy: the publishers, the editors, the reporters, the viewers and readers. Even the army is happy. Its unquestioned sanctity has been preserved. The media only tells the public what it wants to hear.
A media that is free to write and report on everything, whose investigations have put away presidents and prime ministers, chose sentimentality over information, kitsch over death, ultranationalism over truth – more than two years of extreme dereliction of its duty to report the full truth about the war.
The media must examine itself before it has the right to make accusations against the government. An emergency meeting? Great. The topic: how much we lied, concealed, indulged in self-pity, played the victim and misled the public. These were two years of reporting the war in the Gaza Strip without Gazans, of nonstop wallowing in October 7 as if nothing happened afterward, of hero worship and of completely overlooking the crimes.
Even without Karhi's bill, there is no genuine journalism here. There is no reason to defend the kind of journalism that we have. It does more harm than good. The freedom fighters at Tzavta are the main culprits behind the fact that a Norwegian fisherman and an Austrian farmer saw more of the horrors of the war than the members of the media who gathered at Tzavta. They are guilty of amplifying and never questioning the lies of the Israel Defense Forces. When a politician says something to the media, everyone reacts with the appropriate cynicism and skepticism. When the IDF says something to the media, it comes to attention and salutes.
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A steady stream of stories about Israeli victims, and not a word about the Gazan victims. No evidence of any human beings in the Strip besides the hostages in the tunnels. No doubts were ever expressed about the legitimacy of the war. The bombing of hospitals and shelters was justified, and in dreary discussions in the TV studios, there was only one opinion, validating everything. More than 100 Palestinian prisoners died in Israeli jails. Did the media investigate? Was it interested? Not at all.
Let us fight against the closure of the Second Authority for Television and Radio and of the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council, without which the truth will be smothered; against the closure of Army Radio – the voice of a free Israel. Dayan said that without them, she fears for her future in Israel.