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Akiva Novik: "The time has come for being right-wing and religious to be an advantage in the media" | Israel today

2022-10-07T04:39:44.527Z


He grew up in a home without a television, but today presents a daily program on Network B and late-night at the corporation and admits that he is addicted to Twitter ("I dream of the day I will quit it") • He does not miss Channel 13 ("In retrospect, they kicked me up") and he sees A lot of similarity between journalists and politicians ("some journalists have a base, and there are some who flatter a base") • But most importantly: how is it possible that Akiva Novik, 34 years old with a knitted cap, is still single? ("My grandmother is waiting for grandchildren. I haven't found anyone yet, and yes, I'm straight")


How time flies when you're having fun, huh?

Akiva Novik closes two years at "Corporation", where he landed after the surprising dismissal from Channel 13. A look at his resume reveals a good doubt and raises questions that will be discussed here about his future.

Because if you have already passed through most of the main stations in our small local media, where will you be in 20 years?

The guy, let's remember, is only 34 years old.

It's not that Novik doesn't think about it, but right now he's busy with the present: slowly taking over the radio and the public broadcasting screen, with an almost impossible consensus among his colleagues, critics and viewers at home.

He attests to himself: "I don't have a clique, so I'm much more exposed to criticism and abductions from this side as well as from the other side. I'm not associated with any side on the political map and any side in general. In our era it creates a problem, but that's who I am. This struggle between becoming The talent that expresses opinions on any subject in the world and remaining a journalist committed only to the truth accompanies me. I can earn more money, but where will I be as an example in ten years? The opinion will change or be too expensive, and I will be replaced by another opinion. On the other hand, good journalism will always have public demand".

Akiva, let's talk about what's really important.

You are 34 years old, wear a kippah, and single.

What will?

"Let's say that my grandmother is waiting for grandchildren, and she is already 96 years old. Listen, unfortunately I don't have a good answer for that. She definitely wants grandchildren, and I want children just as much. But I haven't found anyone yet. And to your question - yes, I'm straight."

Journalist Akiva Novik: "My grandmother is waiting for grandchildren, I don't have a good answer on the subject", photo: Yehuda Peretz

I don't feel at home in Tel Aviv

He was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Ofra.

He has no problem talking about his father, Yitzhak Novik, who was one of the convicts of the Jewish underground, but he prefers not to.

"He is not a public figure, does not work in the media and lives his private life, so I don't know how this can contribute to the article," he clarifies even before we sit down.

In any case, this did not prevent Novik from being selected in 2016 for the list of the 30 most promising young people in Israel under the age of 30 by Forbes magazine.

In June 2017, he published the series "Religious on the Continuum", which dealt with the phenomenon of the Datalshim. In 2018, he received a law degree at Ono Academic College.

But the main turning point of his life undoubtedly happened in 2007, when he was accepted for service as a reporter in the IDF. Until then, reporters walking around with a kippah were a rare sight. He admits that the path to the media brought him into contact with situations of what he defines as "ignorance of knowledge of international culture, Certainly relative to others, but local knowledge that sometimes exceeded the others." He says that he learned to read at the age of 3 and claims that this matter had a much greater impact on his life than dramatic events such as the evacuation of Gush Katif, which pushed him into the world of media. He testifies to himself that journalism and media are He's simple: "I'm not sure how much this 17-year-old boy wanted to fix the world and go to the media.

I don't think that at the age of 17 I was such an idealist."

In Tel Aviv, even during the interview, he admits that he still does not feel at home, just as he felt when he arrived for the tests at Gali IDF. . As soon as they knew I was right-wing, I wanted to show them that I didn't come to take over, that they wouldn't suspect. Inside I felt that I had to give the right answers, especially for them."

This attitude, if you allow me to be very stereotypical for a moment, characterizes you, the wearers of the knitted caps.

You walk around the world feeling like an underdog, even though many claim that you have long been the "mafia" that controls the media

"Today, of course, I would have driven differently, and I would have come with a much bigger dome, but it is not because the media has changed, but because I have changed. At the end of every panel today there is a seat reserved for the right-hander. Is there a seat reserved for the left-hander? If you look at our change, Amit Segal and Sivan Rahab-Meir paved the way, they carved the rock for us. The big change, in my opinion, happened at the same time as social networks. This caused a very large democratization that the media went through, and since the time I started being a journalist, the listeners' feedback had gone through a jump of decades. Once they recommended opening a Email. Then they said to open Facebook, I said in my lecture to open Twitter. And now I guess they are explaining to open Tiktok, which instantly makes me, despite my young age, a boomer. If when you started your journalistic career the feedback was letters to the system, I managed a telemesser in the GLC

Once a week we listened to recorded messages that people left.

And today, when I submitted a radio show just this morning, I had more than 100 feedbacks during the broadcast."

Novick: "In every panel in the media there is a chair reserved for my right" (for illustration),

So why are the rightists still whining?

"The fact that there is a trend or a process is good and important, but there is still no real representation for all groups. But what? There is the 'rabbi' effect here. I once tried to check if the rumor that children of rabbis were debauched on a large scale was true. I reached someone who checked it and claimed that it really was No. But when you see the son of a rabbi who has taken off the kippah, you are more excited about it, so there is a sense of a phenomenon. The same here - we are so moved by seeing a kippah here and a head covering there in the media, feeling as if the screen is an ear. De facto, there is still no real balance. But I didn't come to mourn here today."

If so, what will an Arab citizen say?

"If I were an Arab media consumer, I would go crazy in front of the television, the newspaper, the website. Or speak Russian. There the lack of representation is much more acute. Or just people from the periphery. Or let's call the child by his name - Netanyahu supporters. Divide the media into supporters of the Netanyahu bloc and opponents of the bloc, And you will get an alarming deviation from the situation in Israeli society. I guess if you check the degree of liberality of the media compared to the liberality of the public, you will discover exactly the same deviation. Conservatism is not the prevailing opinion in the Israeli media."

You are strong on Twitter.

why are you there

what do you need it for?

"Okay, you're touching a weak point here. It's shameful. I dream of the day when I can give up on this. But there isn't a journalist in Israel who doesn't think once a day about leaving Twitter. It happens to everyone, and you say to yourself: 'That's it, I'm getting out of it. I I don't need what it does to my soul'. On the other hand, it's a huge sounding board and it's part of your job today as a journalist. You can't finish a broadcast and go home like you used to. You take out clips from the show, you promote them, you answer people who contact you. But At the same time, I also have 2,000 people I have blocked in view of the violent discourse. I agree with you. It is very problematic, and I will continue to think every day that maybe this is the right day to get off Twitter."

Akiva Novik in GLAZ (archive),

In all the programs that have a right-hander and a left-hander, I feel like I'm in staged wrestling.

He will say so, he will answer exactly what is expected, and they will be rivals.

Everything feels scripted.

"I disbelieve this. They bring in right-wingers and left-wingers so that there is a variety of opinions, and you see that since Network B went for it, all of Israeli radio is going to a pair presentation. This is mainly what is happening on the radio now."

not everyone.

Aviad Kisos and Tal Berman serve as a pair, without the battles, and it is not staged by the nervous right-hander and the good-natured left-hander.

"I don't enjoy watching when there are these fights and I don't enjoy taking part in these kinds of shows. I do like serving in pairs, it's nicer to me, even if I usually serve alone. I don't enjoy staged confrontations. Chaim Levinson, for example, would sometimes do Lee interrupts and comes and takes my side. And that's where the real challenge is. Because, for example, he's now giving a monologue about Smotrich, and tearing him apart for not building enough in Judea and Samaria. So what will I do? How much more can he be defended when the arguments are correct. I do enjoy the presentation The joint is in a good atmosphere and with good friction."

Wouldn't you rather broadcast alone?

"No, because I don't come to the radio just to score points for the camp, but to try to go deeper and also to bring pleasure to the listeners who are at home."

It turns out that you do a lot of things together, from politics to Eurovision

"In our generation of journalists, you can be a Eurovision expert and the next day interview a member of the Knesset with the same level of knowledge and depth. I don't believe that anyone in our era thinks there is a problem with that."

How did you end up hosting the Eurovision Song Contest?

"Eurovision is one of the most intense experiences I've had. Assaf Lieberman and I sit in a hotel for a week, only going out for rehearsals and the competition. We read materials all night, even though I know in advance that I have nothing to do with half of this information, because the song won't last forever. I find I myself follow male and female singers that no one except me and Masaf knows so many things about... a lot of unnecessary information."

Books and religious content

He is a product of GLAZ, but declares that he has the desire to go deeper. He admits that it doesn't matter if it involves preparations for the Eurovision broadcast, or any other topic. In the house where he grew up, there was no mainstream television and journalism, but mainly books and religious content. The two-headed path This has characterized his whole life. On the one hand, he has not married yet, but on the other hand, the cap on his head is still the compass that directs him. And sometimes, according to him, it also hurts his career.

What is it like to be religious in the media, which is a very secular field by definition?

Is there any flirting with secularism as an option?

"In the beginning, there were things I had a hard time with in the media. In language, for example, certainly at the beginning, it bothered me. There were many phenomena that I encountered for the first time in the media, even at the level of television that is open on Shabbat. Today, of course, it is much easier for those who were religious in the media, because there is more consideration. I understand what you're talking about, but I'm not sure it's true. This encounter with secularism would have happened even if I had chosen a career in the military or medicine. I can tell you that I lose thousands of shekels a month because I don't work on Shabbat. I could do cultural Shabbat, for example".

But now you are in consensus.

Now you are part of those who once did not give you representation.

"Uri Orbach once spoke about the conversation of the brazeeia and said that it determines what we are, what is normal, who we ask as one of us, who is this amorphous we? And inadvertently, not on purpose God forbid, we, that is me and what I represent, were not part of a conversation This brazee. For years this was the case. And I walked around in my first years in the media with some notion that if they only knew how right-wing I was, it would be in my hands. And I'm going back to Orbach. He once told me that there would come a day when it would turn around, and that being right-wing and religious in the media would be an advantage. I I think that day has come."

So you don't agree that you control the media, and on the other hand say that today being a journalist with a cap and a right wing is an advantage.

"The situation has improved, that's clear. Because in the end, a journalist doesn't live just by hitting an ideological opponent on the thigh. Not every broadcast I leave I feel like I represented the camp in the best way I could. I'll tell you something more about that. I covered the political system For several years, I am still in many ways covering it, there are many ways to divide the political system: right and left, religious and secular, conservative or liberal. But in my view, what is important is that there are people who are above the threshold of reasonable self-importance and people who are below it. When you perceive this division , you understand a lot of things about politics when you get to a negotiation or a committee or anything. When there are people whose threshold of self-importance exceeds that of the people in the room, it leads to a catastrophe. And when people come who have a sense of self-humor and are not convinced that they are God's gift to mankind, then most In the cases they will be better politicians. This is very true, in my opinion, for media people as well."

Is there a similarity between journalists and politicians?

"Yes, in recent years there are more and more. There are journalists who have bases. There are journalists who flatter bases. There are journalists who cultivate their persona and make themselves social. I think that precisely reporters who cover the political field do not go into politics. Journalists, talents, presenters - went into politics . Regarding reporters, you can perhaps name on one hand those who saw politics up close in the corridors and took sides. The talents who took sides discovered very quickly what the reporters who hung around the Knesset knew for years, that in the Knesset you are not a talent. Far from it."

Did you come to the corporation on the basis of talent?

"I work for a news company whose edition brings journalistic achievements that set the agenda. The digital presence of 'Khan Ha'od' is an unequivocal success story, because you see the data. You will see the effect of Network B on the radio, of investigations, of network series and podcasts . There is an abnormal buzz around 'Kan', in my unbiased opinion, and rightly so. I feel that I have complete journalistic freedom."

You said that during your time at Channel 13 you felt like a waiter with a buzzer, being popped up on every WhatsApp and running wherever you were asked.

"My dismissal from 13 came at a time when I was at a professional low and had hard feelings about the profession. I felt exhausted. When I was fired, or rather kicked, I left Channel 13 bent over and feeling disgusted. In retrospect, it turned out that I was kicked upwards. If someone had told me that's how things were It will be seen two years later, maybe I wouldn't have thought that my world was destroyed like in that moment, when I came out of the dismissal conversation."

Where will you be in ten years?

"No one knows what the role of the journalist will look like in ten years, we have no idea what the demands will be on him and what the tools will be at his disposal. Did you believe ten years ago that this is what journalism would look like today? Let's just say that if I remain relevant to young people, that will be something. You Do you know how insulting it is to me when you come to cover a certain event and see the guys who were with you in the pre-military course?" And it is said that I will ask you to bet on how the upcoming elections will end?

"The solutions are related to the fact that some politician will break a promise. It will inevitably happen. Does this mean we should make more concessions to politicians who lie? I think not. It only sinks us deep into this mud. I think one of two things will happen: either the rotation promised to Gantz will be fulfilled, or some From the just-not-Bibi camp, he will sit with Bibi. Because in the end, just-not-Bibi is one of the most failed ventures in the politics of our time, a guerilla operation that succeeded once, as is the way of such programs."

Are you hurt by politicians lying to you?

"First of all, most of the time in the Knesset I felt that the politicians are better than they appear. In general, MKs are much more valuable and much better than we make them out to be.

Do I have breakpoints?

Certainly, for example when Knesset members run between parties and change sides without any problem at all.

When you see with your own eyes the changes on the message pages, you see even now in the elections politicians who jump between camps, and a quick look at their Twitter is enough to see that they haven't even deleted what they said six months ago.

They are so disdainful that they don't even bother to delete the exact opposite."

Novik on his work in the Knesset: "MKs are much more valuable and good than we make them out to be" (for illustration)

But the media cooperate with it.

You send these messages sometimes, of course for stories.

"And is this an invention of the right? of our generation? of Jacob Bardogo? After all, this is something that was done years ago by journalists. I insisted not to go down this road and I will not go down it, despite offers and requests I received and still receive. What, I don't receive phone calls From politicians who tell me, 'The situation is difficult, I need you now'. And I say to myself, 'Examine yourself with a thousand eyes, you are not in general recruitment.' him".

It can be said that from a media point of view the "government of change" created fewer headlines.

Politics is back to being background noise.

"Does anyone have any doubts that Bibi was right when he said that the media made a concession to the Bennett government, which he would never have done? That she said and did things on certain issues that Bibi would not have given up on as they were given up on? And I put my opinions aside for the moment, as someone who was very disappointed with Bibi and Neftali Bennett as a voter Listen, when people come up to me on the street and say to me, 'Bennett promised that he would be more to the right than Bibi and he deceived me,' what can I say? They are right. But still, for the sake of stability, I wanted the Bennett-Lapid government to last, despite its mistakes and its failure to do Big and historic things."

A few years ago you added the middle name Raul to your name, after Raul Wallenberg.

Why?

"A few years ago, I wrote a small news item for the newspaper about a synagogue named after him. I read a little to give background on it, and I found myself bitterly crying. A few years later, I added his name to the identity card, Akiva Raul Novick, so that whenever someone asked, I could refer him to read about this man. Since then I have been drawn to journalistic work in memory of the Holocaust, I edited with others the podcast 'Lech Tezkor', and I don't have enough words to describe to you how important this topic is to me."

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-10-07

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