A few days ago I participated in a panel at the 'Globes' conference. We talked about the way the Israeli media is functioning in Operation Protective Edge.
The discussion is a bit worn out (a bit?), the claims (including mine) sounded like a pale déjà vu of the Second Lebanon War. At one point in the discussion I said that if a CNN reporter had come here and looked at the story from both sides, he would probably have dealt 90% with the Palestinian suffering in Gaza (at that point there were over a hundred dead, over 50% of whom were 'uninvolved' civilians) and 10% with the Israeli suffering (which by then included alarms, panic victims and a few wounded).
Yinon Magal, the editor-in-chief of 'Walla,' explained to me in response that I had lost my identity, that he is first and foremost a Jew, then an Israeli, and only then a journalist, and therefore he is less interested in what is happening there and more in what is happening here.
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The audience responded with thunderous applause.
The man who lost his identity wants to explain: An uninvolved reporter who came here would certainly have given 90% of his time to the children who died in Gaza and the reality there. That doesn't mean an Israeli reporter should act this way.
It is clear that a journalist is a product of the community in which he lives, and therefore, for the sake of simplicity, it is said that an Israeli reporter should deal 50% with the suffering in Gaza and 50% with the suffering in Israel. No, it is not just a matter of the rules of the profession and the ego of a journalist (too), it is also a correct representation of reality and even a reflection of the national interest. Yes, yes, Yinon. It is precisely your approach, of dealing almost exclusively with Israeli suffering, that harms this interest.
What Yinon Magal didn't know
In one of the endless broadcasts, I sat with former head of the Intelligence Directorate, Amos Yadlin, in the studio and we talked about this very point. Once again, I argued that more needs to be shown about the suffering in Gaza.
In the heat of the debate, I said a really bad sentence. I claimed that the IDF spokesman wants us to constantly be busy with what's happening to us. Yadlin disagreed with me, and rightly so. During one of the breaks in the debate, he showed me a text message from the IDF spokesman. "You spoke well," wrote Brigadier General Almuz. Right. The IDF spokesman wants us to see what's happening in Gaza because it will show what the IDF is doing, will reduce the public's pressure on decision-makers to do something, as if they weren't doing anything.
During the 'Globes' panel, it became clear, for example, that the editor-in-chief of 'Walla' did not know that a center for the disabled in Gaza had been bombed a few days earlier and that several disabled people had been killed. If a senior and informed journalist like Magal, who is probably following the Israeli media closely these days, does not know about this, then what is the chance that the general public knows? And if the public does not know, then have we fulfilled our role?
The media has a special role in times of emergency, military operation or earthquake. It also plays a role in the field of national morale. We are not CNN and we are involved. Israeli media should definitely be concerned with the question of how its broadcasts do not harm the public's ability to withstand a military operation.
The question is what is the degree of bias of the media, compared to its normal way of operating.
What isn't news, there's no point in broadcasting it.
Without getting too bogged down in theories, here are some examples:
1. This procedure should not be allowed, where an announcer comes on in real time over the regular radio broadcast and says "Alarm in...". It shouldn't be allowed. An alarm is sounded. It creates an unnecessary sense of emergency, when the vast majority of alarms end in nothing and the vast majority of listeners are not connected to this alarm and don't need to jump anywhere.
It is enough for the regular broadcaster to exercise reasonable judgment, as on television, and decide whether to announce the alarm, when, and how.
2. There is no need, even on television, to switch to receive a report on every alarm from Ashdod, Ashkelon or Tel Aviv. Our commitment is to broadcast news. News is when something new, different happens, if someone is injured or significant damage is caused. 99% of the alarms end in nothing. It is no longer news. We have become accustomed to it.
The results of the alarms (interceptions, panic victims) can be summarized in one report, once every few hours.
3. There is no reason to bring up the MDA CEO every few hours, to say what we all know. There is no need to receive a report from each hospital individually on the number of injured in that hospital. A general concentration of all the injured is sufficient. If there is a special story of a particular injured person, sure. Show a routine operation in one of the hospitals? Absolutely.
What is not news, there is no point in broadcasting. What does it give the public to know that there are 50 wounded in Soroka, some with injuries in the legs and some in the head? Just an unnecessary waste of time.
4. The entire broadcast schedule should not be transformed into a format of mourning broadcasts on the day we learn about IDF casualties. This significantly erodes the ability of all of us to withstand such a confrontation over time. Lower the tone a bit? Sure, but you don't have to show all the funerals and you can skimp on interviews with bereaved families.
In any case, this entire format is subject to deep ethical doubt, and it is unclear whether the family members' choice to be interviewed is truly a choice they will not regret later.
This 'bias', which I recommend, is entirely reasonable because if the media behaves this way, it will not sin against truth and reality. It may act contrary to its hysterical instincts, the ones that are supposed to captivate viewers to the screen, but we will not deviate from our original role.
Should we doubt the capabilities of the IDF?
Now, to the really difficult questions: Should we broadcast criticism of the leaders of the operation? Should we raise difficult questions? Should we cast doubt on the IDF's capabilities? Should we broadcast that Israel is interested in a ceasefire because our leaders are afraid of losses, or is this playing into Hamas' hands?
In my opinion, there is no doubt that this should be done.
Yes, criticism, yes, stating the real facts, yes, raising questions. We don't have to do it with the intensity we use during routine, we can lower the tone and choose polite wording, but we must not lose the public's trust in our broadcasts.
The Israeli media, for example, has been following the same very fine rule for years that states that they do not broadcast the news of the death of soldiers before all the families know. It is truly an inspiring rule, unique to us (by the way, it is not practiced on civilians), but it is impossible to continue to adhere to it. The public will lose trust in us.
WhatsApp, Facebook statuses, foreign media outlets are no longer a marginal issue. When we ignore the biggest news of the day for hours, it becomes a circus. When we broadcast the news, there is hardly a single person in the public who doesn't know. Here, it's really not a matter of journalistic ego.
Broadcasting news about fatalities is not a scoop. The state should have a huge interest in ensuring that the public does not lose its trust in the established media.
If we don't broadcast news about casualties over time, and don't criticize, and don't say that the Israeli leadership wants a ceasefire, when it wants one, then we'll be a great media outlet, only no one will believe us.
Does Hamas take heart when it hears that the Israeli leadership wants a ceasefire? Maybe, but it also knows that when we broadcast things that it doesn't like, they're also true. It's worth it, and it's not for nothing that they watch Israeli television channels all the time.
I don't have a perfect solution for the issue of announcing dead soldiers, but the IDF must work faster. It can't schedule the announcement for the time that is most convenient for it. It can't wait for the last family member to know. It sometimes has to announce by phone. In any case, the chance that family members won't know for hours after the event that soldiers have been killed, in the age of WhatsApp, is slim.
• The column is published on drucker10.net
