Since 2022, Israel has plunged from 86th to 112th on RSF’s Press Freedom Index score. Since Hamas’ attacks on 7 October 2023, almost 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and the country is seeing increased media censorship, government boycotts and restrictions of editorial independence.As this project from our Journalist Fellow Davide Lerner thoroughly documented, jingoism has dominated Israeli TV and Palestinian suffering has often been ignored. Smaller publications have covered the war more critically, but their impact is often limited and don’t reach the massive audiences TV channels command.
Despite the global backlash against the thousands of casualties caused by Israel’s bombing campaign, most Israelis seem to be fine with news coverage of the conflict. A recent poll by the aChord Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem suggested that 64% of Israelis said domestic media coverage on Gaza was balanced and did not require broader reporting on the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.
I wanted to understand how Israeli mainstream media are reporting on Gaza, what kind of media coverage most audiences are exposed to, and how smaller outlets work to fill the gaps left by major news brands. So I reached out to six journalists who work for global and domestic publications to learn more about their work, the work of their colleagues and Israel’s media landscape more broadly.
According to the journalists I spoke to, Israelis are very interested in current affairs. A survey from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics suggests almost half of Israelis get their news via television, which makes it their primary news source.Recent articles from international outlets like the Guardian and El País have described a news ecosystem driven by aggressive nationalism and official narratives which, with a few exceptions, fails to report on the suffering of Gazans and Palestinians in the West Bank. Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert laid it explicitly to our former Fellow Davide Lerner: “Israeli TV and media don’t show anything from Gaza.
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