Walking a fine line between persuasion and reporting in political media - opinion

As Nick Enfield explained in a piece published in the Quillette online magazine last week, most of us take the language versions of the world to be reliable. These originate in news reports, articles, and speeches. When we believe that we understand something clearly, this has a “thought-terminating effect.” With confusion thereby gone and replaced with assumed clarity, we become, quoting the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, “satisfied.”

But what actually is happening is a form of “cognitive vulnerability,” Enfield adds. That condition facilitates the manipulation of people by any system of thought that is “seductively clear.”

If you assume that the above analysis is on the mark, it becomes even clearer how important our media are in acting as agents of the facts of contemporary events. Their importance lies in providing a balanced, comprehensive, and fair presentation of what has happened and what those events could mean.

That responsibility is important, even crucial.

For example, on August 19 at the Democratic Convention, PBS’s Judy Woodruff, depending on a report by Barak Ravid in Axios, repeated a claim that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the matter of a Gaza ceasefire. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement denying that claim. Woodruff eventually admitted that she made a “mistake,” as the call never took place.

On Aug. 15, Ravid cited two US sources. He wrote, “One source said Trump’s call was intended to encourage Netanyahu to take the deal, but stressed he didn’t know if this is indeed what the former president told Netanyahu.” Either Ravid was fooled or he allowed himself to be fooled. For sure, the public was fooled.

A few days later, on August 21, Netanyahu’s office found itself having to deny a report on Israel’s Channel 11 that the prime minister agreed that Israel would withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor. I’ve lost count of the numerous denials and retractions.

In July, Netanyahu denied he added new conditions to the US-backed truce proposal. In June, while the US announced that it didn’t know what Netanyahu was talking about after he attacked Biden for “withholding weapons,” it turned out that weapons were held up while other supplies were delayed.

In May, he denied that the IDF warned him before October 7 of Hamas’s intention to attack Israel. It turned out that the “warning” concerned a risk of potential action by Hamas and Hezbollah due to the judicial reform crisis. Oddly enough, he received severe criticism for doubting the loyalty of the protesters when he accused them of encouraging Israel’s enemies.

Either reporters have lost the ability to collect facts, or they see themselves simply as conduits for leaks and behind-the-back maneuverings.

Israeli media used to be political mouthpieces

We need to recall that Israel’s newspapers, when there were many, a long time ago, were overwhelmingly organs of political parties. Hatzofeh, of the Mizrachi national religious party, closed in 1992. Davar, the organ of the Histadrut/Mapai conglomerate, closed in 1983. Herut, the daily of the Herut party, the Likud’s forerunner, closed back in 1965. Haaretz, although owned by the Schocken family, presented the views of the General Zionists for many decades.

That has all changed if one ignores the dailies of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) press. What does continue, however, is the very obvious political engagement of the remaining media outlets, including broadcast, electronic, and digital outlets.

For example, on the day it was announced that the bodies of four hostages had been found and retrieved from Gaza, the media began to flow with the question of who or what had killed them. As the day wore on, the radio and newspapers’ websites continued to push the question of whether they had died in an earlier Israeli air attack. Relatives were questioned, and the theme gathered resonance.

No one in the media – neither an editor, a director, a reporter, or an interviewer – thought the issue was perhaps too delicate or that perhaps it could wait. Obviously, the chance to blame the government for their deaths, even indirectly, was too much not to pass over.

By the next day, autopsies had been performed on the remains, and the families themselves revealed that bullets or bullet fragments were the cause of death. For a media that accuses the government, and Netanyahu in particular, with callousness, this unnecessary raising of an emotional and quite personal issue in such a public manner highlights the true media concern: the government and its head.

ON TISHA B’AV, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir entered the Temple Mount compound. Sensing an opportunity, more than a dozen youths prostrated themselves. The police, knowing the minister’s views, did nothing to halt the procedure. Josh Breiner, Haaretz’s police affairs reporter, sent an update to the paper’s website in which he complained the police were acting in contravention of the law and the legal judgments.

Unfortunately for him and his editor, he erred. Israel has no law prohibiting Jewish worship on the Temple Mount. Indeed, the 1967 Law for the Protection of Holy Sites explicitly permits worship. Moreover, since 1993, then under Aharon Barak, the High Court of Justice has decided over and over again that the rights of access and worship are fundamental even if it agrees the police can prohibit such acts in the interest of public order. It is only government policy, the “status quo,” that has interfered with those rights until now. Within a few hours, Breiner’s news item was altered.

The public, perceiving this phenomenon of bias, has lined up – impressively, if the ratings are to be believed – behind new outlets like Channel 14 and the Israel Hayom newspaper. Unfortunately, the issue of partisan balance continues. Instead of the public being divided on the style of writing, the presentation or variety of content, or even something mundane like “blonds vs. brunettes” as newscasters, it is the point of view that divides rather than the reliability of one’s media.

If the media becomes part and parcel of the political arena, if it sheds its professionalism, if it does not abide by its own code of ethics, if it promotes narratives that are unsupported by facts or are published to serve one political camp rather than to aid its readers to make better decisions and protect Israel’s democracy, that media will be more of a problem than the various problems they are seeking to deal with.

The writer is a researcher, analyst, and opinion commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.