Two weeks ago Channel 10 News’ Miki Haimovich conducted an interview with Nobel laureate Ada Yonath. The following day, Channel 10’s morning show re-edited the interview to make it look as though the morning hosts Haim Etgar and Sivan Cohen are conducting the interview themselves. This was recently mentioned in Yediot Ahronot but I thought I would create a video to demonstrate this journalistic atrocity:
Now people may ask “What’s the big deal? Instead of this person doing the interview, you get that person”. Well, I contend that this is a big deal since unlike other professions like advertising, sales or law where honesty is no longer expected -- in journalism, credibility is currency. We don’t expect our newsmen to lie to us -- not intentionally, not wittingly -- and finding out otherwise is disheartening.
Every now and then I stumble upon an idea that is just too Israeli to write about in English. In these rare instances I guest blog on Room 404 in Hebrew. That is what happened yesterday, when I got a snail mail from the Israeli Internet Society in preparation for the annual conference, asking me and other members to send ideas by fax. Send by fax? I thought that was strange and worth mentioning. And so I did.
Apparently someone at Israel’s Channel 10 also thought it was worth mentioning, as they contacted me today to confirm the accuracy of my post. A couple of hours later it was broadcast on Hayom Shehaya, their nightly news program with Guy Zohar:
Channel 10’s Friday news magazine Shishi raises the standard of reporting each week, literally writing the book on how a news magazine should be done. Anchormen Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah’s segment ‘On The Road’, which turned the traditional in-studio interview into a-day-out-with-the-interviewee report, has already been copied by Channel 1’s Ayala Hason and Ben Caspit -- including the famous Statler-and-Waldorf-like embedded commentary. In addition to the outstanding ensemble of reporters that the show sports, it is famous for its self-awareness, self-criticism, and a fair amount of ‘process stories’. Shelah and Drucker often criticize the Israeli media, always starting with their own place of work.
The recent security situation in the region triggered the Pavlovian media response of rolling news reports, and when you mix a barrage of rockets, satellite latency, and loads of air time -- inevitably you get a fair share of on-camera bloopers. Leave it to Shelah and Drucker to end their show on a lighter note with a compilation of the channel’s reporters supplying a week’s dosage of self-deprecating humor.
The video is in Hebrew but most of it is self-explanatory:
Wars don’t happen in winter anymore
Even for us it is a bit too cold to hate
Wars don’t happen in winter anymore
Even for us it’s a bit too cold to conquer
I have already written on Israeli journalists playing dress-up, but that was during peacetime. Now that a new war might be imminent, it seems our journalists collectively decided to wear uniform in the form of leather jackets. I have been glued to the TV screen during the past few days, zapping between Channel One, Channel Two and Channel Ten – and it looks like one hideous leatherwear catalog from the 1990’s that magically came to life:
We already knew soldiers have their standard operating procedures – but now we know TV newsmen have them too. Continue reading…
