Gideon Levy : The Masses - Not Netanyahu - Are the Real Censors of Israel's Free Press
Israel’s left-wing media
is right-wing. Its heroic freedom struggle against the forces of evil
on the right — that is, Benjamin Netanyahu — is not really a struggle,
it isn’t heroic and it certainly isn’t about freedom. The Israeli media
has sufficient freedom, regardless of Netanyahu and Israel Hayom, but it chooses not to use it and to betray its mission.
It’s
not the government that dictates the content and commands the fear and
ingratiation of the media, but rather the masses — readers, listeners
and viewers.
The
current media battle is nothing but a trick. Not only is it over
marginal broadcasters — Army Radio, the Knesset Channel and Kan, the new
name of the Israel Broadcasting Corporation — but even if Sara
Netanyahu were to personally hire all editors and reporters, Kan would
not be substantially different from today’s Channel 1, or from its
purportedly free near-clones.
A
first-time visitor to Israel would surmise that an impassioned battle
was taking place, that journalists were fighting for Israel’s liberty,
for the very soul of its democracy — freedom of expression. As if Israel
were Turkey. As if they fulfilled their mission before the government’s
blatant interference, but now a malicious administration was trying to
silence them. The New York Times has already announced “How Benjamin Netanyahu is crushing Israel’s free press” (July 30) as if the prime minister is why there’s no freedom of the press here.
Let’s
get back to reality. It’s possible that the views of most Israeli
journalists are concentrated on the center-left. That’s entirely
unimportant: They are creating a submissive media of the mainstream,
limp and cowardly. It serves the accepted narrative and does not dare to
challenge it, much less to undermine it.
Journalists
fight courageously against salmonella in breakfast cereal, high home
prices, traffic and construction accidents, even against Netanyahu —
anything, as long as they don’t irritate — but they would never come out
courageously against their true master: the masses.
It’s
not the government that threatens them, but rather the Moloch of
ratings, before which they cower. Everything they do is aimed to
entertain public opinion (which is mainly right-wing) — to distract,
thrill and incite it, but not to irritate it.
The
media will even “courageously” investigate government corruption and
cause cabinet members and presidents to face prosecution, all the while
taking care not to anger its customers. It doesn’t report on the
occupation — the masses don’t want to know — and isn’t properly critical
of the army, lest those masses turn against the media.
The masses are the censor in Israel that the media answers to, though a sort of shameful self-censorship.
The
media is therefore the big collaborator in the occupation, allowing it
to exist without raising questions. It is the senior partner in the
demonization of the Palestinians, and it aids in the concealment and
denial of the crimes of the occupation. The leftist journalists don’t
want to irritate, so they don’t report the truth about the occupation or
don’t report on it at all.
The
Israeli media is right-wing and ultranationalist. One only need see the
savage attacks being directed against the country’s only liberal
newspaper, with a relatively tiny circulation — the one you are reading
now — including a “special headquarters” of reservists set up to fight
it.
If
the media is leftist, why are they only lashing out at Haaretz? The
reservists want a media in which the army is above all suspicion and the
military correspondents parrot press releases, a press that wallows in a
sense of Israeli victimhood ad nauseam and entirely obscures the other
victim.
Of
course, that’s not a courageous or left-wing press. This dance is meant
only to perpetuate the status quo. The right shouts Leftists! in order
to extort more right-wingers — not only Channel 2’s Roni Daniel, but
also right-wing lawyer and commentator Nadav Haetzni. At the same time,
the media shouts Freedom! in order to portray itself as a freedom
fighter.
If that were really the case, things would be very different.
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