Israeli Media Admit Anti-War Agenda

Tue, Jun 5, 2007 at 8:57:28 am PDT

Journalists are no longer in the business of simply reporting facts and events; increasingly, they see their job as “activism,” and the points of view they promote are invariably leftist and transnationalist. Honest journalists will admit this outright, and we see the pernicious effects of this information manipulation and filtering everywhere.

And it isn’t only a huge problem in the United States; Israeli media officials have now admitted that they deliberately slanted the news from the first Lebanon War.

(IsraelNN.com) A former Israel Broadcasting Authority news editor admits: “We slanted the news towards a withdrawal from Lebanon - because we had sons there.”

Speaking at the Haifa Radio Conference on Monday, several former and current news broadcasters on Voice of Israel and Army Radio discussed the tremendous influence they nearly all agreed they had on Israel’s national agenda.

Dr. Chanan Naveh, who edited the Israel Broadcasting Authority radio’s news desk in late 1990’s and early 2000’s, was particularly bombastic about his pervasive reach: “The morning audience, stuck in traffic jams or at work, is simply captive - they’re ours.” He also mentioned, with no regrets, two examples in which he and his colleagues made a concerted effort to change public opinion:

“Three broadcasters - Carmela Menashe, Shelly Yechimovich [now a Labor party Knesset Member - ed.], and I - pushed in every way possible the withdrawal from Lebanon towards 2000. In our newsroom, three of the editors had sons in Lebanon, and we took it upon ourselves as a mission - possibly not stated - to get the IDF out of Lebanon... I have no doubt that we promoted an agenda of withdrawal that was a matter of public dispute.”

At this point, Army Radio broadcaster Golan Yochpaz interrupted, “In my opinion, that is just super-problematic - super-problematic.” Naveh did not miss a beat and said, “Correct, I’m admitting it, I’m not apologizing, I’m just saying this is what happened. It came from our guts because of the boys in Lebanon, this is what we did and I’m not sorry... I am very proud that we had a part in getting of our sons out of Lebanon.”

(Hat tip: WriterMom.)