Israel Matzav

Hebrew media pulls Israelis left

When I talk about Israel's Leftist media, those of you who read Arutz Sheva and JPost, even with an occasional smattering of YNet, may be wondering why I am so flippant about referring to our media as leftist. Well, here's proof that I am right.

Nearly 80 percent of the 500 people polled by the Tel Aviv-based Geocartography Knowledge Group believe that Israel's Hebrew media outlets influence their audience, rather than reflect its views, and 53% of those polled said that those outlets support and attempt to advance leftist viewpoints.

Abraham Sion, a law professor and chair of the Center for Law and Mass Media at the Ariel University Center of Samaria, which commissioned the study, believes that when taken together, those two statistics show that the Hebrew media is one of the main factors in forming the Israeli public's general political orientation.

"After all that we've gone through in Israeli society over the past 20 years, how can it be possible that there are many people that still believe that we can achieve peace with the Palestinians?" Sion said.

"There are many people that still believe that Oslo was the right way to go. And that, I think, is a direct result of the nature of the media's coverage of the past 20 years, and of the great deal of influence it has over the general public."

The percentages of Israelis who saw a left-leaning Hebrew media were higher among religious people (73%) and people aged 18-34 (60%).

The media bias is much greater here than in the US, because in the US there is (or is supposed to be) a separation between the editorial pages and the news pages. News is supposed to be 'just the facts.' In Europe they don't even pretend to have such a separation. In Israel too, there is mostly no separation.

[N]early all of the people polled said that they could routinely see journalists' opinions filtering through their work. These perceived biases have led, according to the study, to a certain level of distrust of the Hebrew media within Israeli society: 35% of those polled don't give credence to news reports at all.

Many of those polled also link the Supreme Court to the Hebrew media and see the court as having a Leftist bias, which I have also discussed on this blog many times.

The Supreme Court is also perceived as being intimately linked with the Hebrew media: 45% of those polled said the media and the Supreme Court influence each other, compared to only 19% who said that there was no connection.

Additionally, 43% said that the Supreme Court's decisions favor leftist viewpoints, compared to only 5% who believe that the decisions display a rightist agenda.

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:01 PM