Israel elections and media responsibility

 Note: you may want to return to this essay later in the week; I may revise it--as  I revised last week's essay.

Second Note: Revised November 1, 2012

 

 

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has scheduled national elections for January, 2013. In case you have forgotten, Israel’s national elections bring a season of competition—to see who can create the ‘Biggest Whopper’.

Apparently, Israelis love ‘whoppers’.

Almost the instant we saw Netanyahu’s announcement, whopper competition began: Netanyahu, it was reported, promised to surrender to Syrian President Assad all of the Golan, down to the Kinneret;  Defense Minister Ehud Barak was reported to have betrayed Netanyahu; and former Prime Minister--and scandal defendant--Ehud Olmert  gave us one of the biggest ‘whoppers’ of the new season:  it was not Abbas who killed the 2009 Olmert give-away peace plan, but the demonized political Right.

After just two days of news, Israel was abuzz.  

No doubt about it: big whoppers sell.

The beginning of this election season brought us something new—a big whopper from an outsider.  Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas (who appears to be in his seventh year of a four-year term) gave us this:  former PM Olmert was sooooo close to peace; but the ‘bad’ Israelis scuttled it.  For perhaps the first time ever, Mr Abbas seemed to be taking a serious interest in Israel. His whopper even appeared to suggest that if we elected Olmert to another term as Prime Minister, peace would be ours.

Israel’s media reported all of this, mostly without comment. Why? Is the media telling us that we should choose our national leadership based on who creates or supports the biggest whopper;  or, does media competition require that news professionals ply their trade with a ready-fire-aim philosophy? Or do we get such reporting simply because the media has decided that Israelis prefer excitement over truth?

It certainly looks that way.

But if excitement attracts our attention, there is a suggestion in the air that political titillation has lost its lustre.  Israelis may want something better. 

We see a hint of this desire for something better from the media--from the media itself. Even as the news industry here showcases its big whoppers, it appears to do so without conviction. As we see misrepresentation and political outrage tumble across our line of vision, such stories don’t last. They have no shelf-life. The news cycle for outrage and other forms of the ‘Big Whopper’  simply isn’t what it used to be. Remember ‘women on buses’ or Haredi ‘discrimination’ against women in the army? What happened to those stories?

They disappeared.

In Israel, media whoppers flop. Whatever the motivation for their publication, the impact of such quick news cycles for misrepresentations is to create an indifference to misrepresentation. Haven’t you noticed? When an outrageous headline grabs our attention, an odd thing happens: our excitement doesn’t last. We have become so well trained by past experience to expect such stories to flame out, our immediate reaction is like a campfire spark—it jumps and then evaporates. In fact, the faster a story evaporates, the more convinced we are that it wasn’t true in the first place: if it were true, it wouldn’t die so abruptly.

The loser in all of this could be the media. Yes, Big Whoppers excite, no question; but the more often political titillation flashes and disappears, the more convinced we become that the excitement was faked. The actual result (reader distrust) destroys the story’s original intent (read our news! We tell the truth!).

Israelis may never grow tired of looking at lies. But they may grow very tired of the media that promotes those lies. The media might bring to this new national election season a sense of glee at the titillation it can create. But the reading public seems increasingly jaded—not just at politicians, but the media as well.

That’s a shame. Our democracy needs an honest media. A dishonest media can destroy our democracy; and there’s no doubt about Israel’s media: it is not honest.

Want proof? Watch the news. Then ask the public how they see that news being presented.

Does Mahmoud Abbas really speak honestly about Israel? Should Olmert’s public declarations really be printed without an immediate ‘fact-check’?

For the media, reader perception becomes public reality. The messenger (media) becomes the message (another lie). The media might enjoy showcasing a national event as a dirty fight. But the public sees not only the dirty fight, but prejudiced news professionals joining that fight--instead of reporting objectively about it.

The media could pay a price for such behaviour. For example, the newspaper, Haaretz,  suffers. Could its troubles be related—partly or wholly-- to this issue?

National elections are important. The media has a responsibility to inform—and, when it comes to Big Whoppers, to tell us the truth. The meal our media so joyously prepares with its current editorial behaviour may not be a gourmet feast; it could be poisonous stew.

Ask Haaretz.