"Shame!!! Write here 11 happily eating pizza at the place of the attack in front of everyone!".
A video circulated on social media, in which the two corporate reporters - Gili Cohen and Suleiman Masveda - are seen frightened, surrounded by quite a few people, after they put something in their mouth during a work shift and were labeled as "enjoying" during an attack, led me to write a column that does not deal with another review of a reality TV episode or New docu out.
True, it is only a video that was circulated on the networks, and it included insults and not an actual attack, as Udi Segal and Alon Ben David experienced a few days ago, but the marking of the reporters marks the unbearable step up and the "media" becoming a target for the next violent crowd the reporters will meet.
or they will not meet.
Because if I'm a journalist, I don't go to the scene of the next attack or demonstration without close police escort.
We are after 24 very painful hours and there are those who choose to turn Udi Segal, Alon Ben David and the News 13 team who came to broadcast from the scene of the attack into enemies.
Leave the ugly chants on this day and in general - here it's already a real assault.
be ashamed
pic.twitter.com/HebEsJQZv0
— almog boker (@bokeralmog) January 28, 2023
The media in Israel deserves criticism, but democracy is beginning to correspond with its end when its media is afraid to be part of the game.
We are already there, unfortunately.
We have already met these buds of the end of democracy in attacks on camera crews in the past, and unfortunately we have come to the conclusion that attacking media crews in Israel is a consensus on both sides: the journalist Amnon Abramovich was accompanied by an angry mob on a foreign broadcast, stones were thrown at the journalist Ila Hasson, and the Channel 14 positions in the Bima Square were attacked at the time demonstration.
"The end of democracy" is not the apparent reform of the judicial system, it is not a recalculation of the cost and benefit of public broadcasting, and certainly not "the economy, fool".
The largest democracies in the world will make changes in the structure of their regimes and the distribution of power between the authorities.
But there is no democracy in a world that lives with a reality where media organizations consider whether to send out camera crews, choose who is better to send and conduct a broadcast while fearing the audience that surrounds the crew.
A public that goes from legitimate media criticism to persecution around eating pizza and a pogrom in equipment, is the red line that we must not cross.
A crowd that surrounds TV crews, and as in the News 13 report, waits for the police to leave the scene to attack the broadcast station - is the warning sign for all of us.
We don't have the privilege of looking for the chicken and the egg in this story, if it all started with a prime minister who struggled with a hostile media, with "Olan Shishi" commentators who repeatedly insult Likud voters, or with those who took up the "Al Jazeera 12" campaign.
The conversation doesn't start and end with an end-of-shift pizza.
The journalist Raviv Drucker talked about real blood that should be spilled in the streets, and here his colleagues from the channel almost experienced it.
Incredible!!!!
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— miri barbi 64,000🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🟢 (@MiriBarbi) January 29, 2023
Calling everyone to relax will no longer be enough either.
The personal safety of TV crews is currently at a point where talk needs to be replaced by action.
Communication Minister Shlomo Karai did well to tweet with concern, but his next phone call should have been to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gabir.
Symbolically and with perfect timing, the Israel Police inaugurated an innovative broadcasting mobile upon taking office, and it is not the only mobile where broadcasting and policing should go together.
The stew that floated a long time ago requires the police to secure every broadcasting vehicle in the event of an explosive event - and the arrest of the citizen who attacked the broadcasting station of Udi Segal and Alon Ben David is a good start, but not enough.
The courts also need to change diskettes and understand that not only is a stone thrown at a judge a symbolic violation of democracy, but also a thwarting of broadcasting and physical harm to journalists.
Attacking the media teams, all channels
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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