April 25, 2018
MEDIA COMMENT: Newsworthy?
NEWSWORTHY?
If we go back a few years to when Israel Hayom was in its infancy, it, too, was ignored by the mainstream media.
BY YISRAEL MEDAD, ELI POLLAK APRIL 25, 2018
On March 11, a slew of Lebanese news agencies and online portals reported that the “Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian Territories,” Mohammad Ahmad Hussein, had arrived in Beirut to participate in the 4th International Forum of Solidarity with Palestine, organized by the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. At the meeting, Hussein presented a special citation to the Forum coordinator, Sheikh Yusuf Abbas, for his efforts on behalf of Palestine.
This same Abbas, in his speech at the convention noted that the slogan of the Forum is “Jerusalem is the capital of all Palestine without borders.
Another participant was deputy secretary general of Hezbollah Sheikh Naim Qassem. He is a terrorist. The former chief Hamas terrorist, Ismail Haniyeh, addressed the meeting via satellite.
Sheikh Hussein is no babe in the woods. Last July, in the wake of the terrorist shooting on the Temple Mount in which two Israeli policemen were murdered, he was arrested.
As reported by the Galatz army radio station, “in his sermon, Hussein called on Arabs and Palestinians to gather en masse for the sake of Jerusalem, and against the closure of the compound.” The Kan news network, the Israel Broadcasting Corporation, also referred to his arrest, saying that Hussein had been delivering his Friday sermon outside the Old City’s Lion’s Gate when he was detained.
The story of Hussein’s visit to Lebanon was aired on TV Channel 20 news on April 10.
The news item brought with it responses from advocate Yotam Eyal, a member of the Legal Forum for Eretz Yisrael, who noted that the actions of Hussein are “criminal and serious.”
He further stated that “for years the mufti incites against Israel and its citizens and in this case even met with heads of terrorist organizations who work night and day to destroy Israel.”
On the face of it, Hussein violated Israeli law on a number of counts, such as entering an enemy state, contact with foreign agents and aiding and abetting terrorists. One can be assured that the Israeli security services knew about his trip, yet Hussein was not arrested upon returning to Israel.
Being that our main interest is the media, we note that the press and networks as well as almost every other outlet quashed the story completely.
This is known in the journalism world as “spiking a story.”
Israel’s mainstream TV channels, radio stations and websites reported nothing about it.
It was, we can only surmise, not “newsworthy.” Even the conservative newspapers Makor Rishon and Israel Hayom did not report it. Why? Was it indeed not newsworthy? Are we, perhaps, wrong in our estimation of what happened in Beirut last month? Compare to some of the “important stories” that surfaced on Israel’s Remembrance Day and Independence Day. A female soldier was not allowed to participate in an official army singing event and graffiti appeared in Samaria against the local army commander.
These events were reported on rather extensively.
Consider what would happen if a member of the Israel’s far Right participated in a neo-Fascist, not to mention Nazi, support rally in Europe.
Would such an issue remain quiet? So, what happened here? We can only guess.
Our first surmise has to do with the status of TV Channel 20 news. It is a threat to the other TV channels, 11, 12 and 13. Indeed, thus far the ratings of Channel 20 news are on par with those of TV Channel 11, which belongs to the Kan Israel Broadcasting Corporation. The left-wing media is afraid that Channel 20 will become Israel’s Fox News and outperform all the others. The last thing it would want to do then is to provide a platform for a news scoop which comes from the channel.
But this would not explain why Makor Rishon or Israel Hayom remained silent. Perhaps the mufti was on a secret mission for Israel’s security services? Hard to believe, yet who knows? There is, perhaps, a simpler explanation, more logical: lack of solidarity among the media.
Why should anyone give credit to Channel 20 when in fact, all the information concerning Hussein’s visit to Lebanon is freely available on the Internet and Israel’s media should have reported about it in March, not a month later in April? The idea that it is in the interest of Israel’s media to enhance plurality and give credit to an infant news organization seems to have eluded even parts of the conservative media.
There are other aspects that could have played a role in the story being ignored. One is that in March, when Hussein’s visit took place, too many other internal Israeli stories were on the agenda of the news outlets, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s investigations, political infighting or other items. A second is that anything to do with the Temple Mount, the Wakf officials and their activities is usually seen through the prism of “Jews.” More specifically, Jewish “fanatics” or “extremists.”
To step back and see the nefarious machinations of the Muslims there seems to be outside the scope of how reporters and editors view that situation.
Arabs there, invariably, are simply reacting to Jewish moves. They are considered to be the legitimate occupiers of the Temple Mount. They are under threat from the Jewish “fanatics” and therefore the actions of Sheikh Hussein were perhaps not nice, but easy to accept and overlook.
Yet, this is not enough.
Channel 20 has reported other stories, not less interesting.
For example, this past Sunday, it related that senior defense officials have recommended that Israel persuade the United States to delay the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem. According to the report, these officials relate the increased violence of the past few months, including Hamas’s attacks on the border with Gaza, to the American move. It would be better according to their assessment if a more opportune time were found for the move. Education Minister Naftali Bennett, member of the Cabinet, was asked to respond. He made it clear that he would not accept such an assessment and that furthermore such decisions are political ones and are not in the realm of the armed forces.
This too, we would think is an interesting story which should have been picked up, at least by a newspaper such as Israel Hayom. But it wasn’t.
If we go back a few years to when Israel Hayom was in its infancy, it, too, was ignored by the mainstream media. So much so that we in Israel’s Media Watch had to pressure the various state-funded media (whose budgets come from the taxpayers’ pockets) to make sure that the paper’s editorials, journalists and content would be treated on an equal footing to those of Haaretz and Yediot Aharonot when headlines were read out or media people were invited to panels being broadcast.
The bottom line is that journalistic solidarity is sorely needed. It is a fundamental component of a truly pluralistic media scene in Israel.
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April 13, 2018
MEDIA COMMENT: Media-assisted legal irresponsibility
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| Democracy has become a slogan bandied about by our media too often and too frivolously.
Especially today, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we recall that Hitler’s dictatorship was installed with the aid of the democratic process. We need remind ourselves that all instruments of power, governmental and non-governmental, are never totally free of weaknesses. Israel’s democracy is strong and vibrant, even if too many journominous signs suggest that strong forces exist which seek to usurp the democratic process for their own purposes. A free and irreverent media should play a critical role in rooting out and exposing these ugly forces. A free media must stand up to power of all types: political, economic and ideological. Sadly, the Alon Hassan affair is an example of the exact opposite. Hassan was the all-powerful boss of the employees’ union at the Ashdod Port. He did not hide his use and love of power, leading strikes and assuring that the median salary at the port is among the highest in Israel – NIS 28,000 a month in 2014, the year he had to step down. Hassan was not a particularly endearing person – especially if were not part of his union. He made enemies and his actions led to considerable monetary losses for Israel’s economy. According to his March 2016 indictment, some NIS 22 million in bribes were related to Hassan’s actions. On January 22, 2016, Haaretz wrote that Hassan “has come to symbolize corruption and inefficiency in the public sector.” Yet Hassan, it turns out, was innocent. Not being lovable is not sufficient reason for the police and state attorneys to step in. But this is precisely what they did. With great fanfare, the accusations against Hassan were publicized. As a result, he lost his earnings, his companies and his freedom. The police and the state attorneys concluded he was guilty of bribery, blackmail, whitewashing finances and more. Serious stuff, enough to break even strong people. However, last week, some four years later, the truth came out: Beersheba District Court Justice Joel Eden fully exonerated Hassan. In his words: “After all the checks, there was no evidence of his cheating and a conflict of interest was not proven. Actions taken as part of a job are not equivalent to fraud and breach of trust. Hassan’s actions were necessary for defending the workers. There is no evidence that Alon Hassan carried out directly or indirectly actions meant to encourage contacts with a company owned by his relatives.” The response of the prosecutor’s office at the Justice Ministry to Hassan’s accusations, as published on Friday in Israel Hayom, was: “The claims that he was personally persecuted and prosecuted are false and misguided. The indictment was presented to the court after passing the scrutiny of many, including the highest echelons of the State Attorney’s office. They all thought that the evidentiary material was sufficient for [a high chance] of conviction.” Hassan was an elected official. He had to step down because some police and Justice Ministry officials used their power, and public funds, to crucify him. Who are these officials? How much money did they waste in terms of salaries, research and other legal necessities, not to mention the court employees, at the expense of the taxpayer? We do not assume for a moment that these officials were settling personal scores, but it is very clear that their professional judgment was and is impaired, to say the least. In the United States, prosecutors are elected officials and any prosecutor leading such a complex, costly and lengthy case and losing would certainly have to step down. That is true democracy. But here, these same officials will be able to continue using their power frivolously, without any accounting. The media reported the case broadly, especially due to its implications with regard to the ongoing investigation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his family. However it did not pose the necessary questions to nor did it demand personal responsibility from the police, the attorney-general’s office and others. The reaction was quite different from what should be expected. When Teva announced widespread layoffs recently, the media was in an uproar, especially against the company directors, who refused to accept personal responsibility for the mistakes or return their remuneration to the company. Yet in the Hassan case, although we do not know the exact figures – and this too should be supplied by the State Attorney’s office – there is no doubt that the expense was many millions of shekels. Years of manpower which could have been used to pursue true criminals were wasted. But the worst of it all was that unelected officials used their power to remove an elected one – Hassan. This is far from being the first time such an event has occurred in Israel. In 1996, former justice minister Yaakov Neeman was just two months in power when he was indicted for giving false testimony and providing illegal consultation to a witness in the Arye Deri case. He was exonerated fully and became Netanyahu’s finance minister. But at that time no one demanded that heads roll in the prosecutor’s office for this unwarranted and unprofessional interference in the democratic process. The lack of media attention gave the police and the Justice Ministry officials the clear message that they were immune from being held personally responsibility for erroneous or misguided actions. Israeli democracy paid dearly for this media “lapse.” Yom Kippur War hero and former police minister Avigdor Kahalani was another victim. In the year 2000, he was investigated for supposedly obtaining illegal benefits from Ma’ariv publisher Ofer Nimrodi. He was indicted for exposing secret information concerning the investigation of Nimrodi, as well as breach of trust and obstruction of justice. It took two years, but he too was fully exonerated. Did anyone take responsibility? Did the media demand it? No, they did not. Perhaps the most egregious example is that of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. He was investigated for a period of over 10 years, with the various allegations changing over time. Not one of them held water and he, too, was fully exonerated. The media, for sure, was responsible for churning up a negative characterization of Liberman but again, with no proof. He was unsavory ideologically to many members of the press – but that is their crime, not his. He paid not only a personal price but also a public one, and this is frightening. Due to the indictment against him concerning his role in appointing Israel’s ambassador to Belarus, he had to resign his post as foreign minister. The indictment was submitted in December 2012 and on November 6, 2013, he was unanimously acquitted. The ease with which unelected officials behind closed doors can determinate the fate of innocent people cannot be allowed to continue. It is high time that even in the hallowed corridors of the Justice Ministry accountability and responsibility become the norm rather than the exception. ^ |
MEDAD'S WORDS 