40,40 people marched on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue earlier this week. 12,<> people, Jews and non-Jews, including the mayor of New York City. They left the house, dressed in colorful costumes, boarded designer trucks and waved Israeli flags to express their support for the Jewish state. They invested their time and energy to show that Israel is a wonderful country in their eyes, a place in the world that deserves to be strengthened. The atmosphere was festive, embracing and even moving, but if you chose to watch News <> on the day of the parade - you wouldn't know all this.
Channel 12 News did not skip the march. They did report it, but the angle they chose to present to viewers was very specific. They did not talk about the support and the festivities, but chose to focus on the protest that took place before and around it – adding, so that no one would miss it, that the protest was supposed to continue throughout the long stay of Israeli elected officials in the United States.
It is important to know that this year the traditional march in support of Israel has resumed since it was halted due to the coronavirus, and the number of marchers was large. While the news outlets keep telling us about the tension between Israel and the United States – not only at the leadership level, but also between the Jewish community there and Israel – the march points to a different reality on the ground.
And what about the protesters? The news reported that a thousand people protested against the marchers. Journalists marching in Manhattan, who I spoke to in real time, didn't even know it was happening, because it was swallowed up by the crowd. Later, I received a video that showed several dozen loud people standing on the side of the road. The next day, Shani Granot-Lubton, one of the protest organizers, wrote that a thousand people marched in a march against government policy. The photo she attached illustrated at least twice as small.
When Channel 12 reported on a thousand protesters, it relied on the organizers, without verifying the number or asking for proof or photos. Well, that's not new anymore. We have become accustomed to protesters throwing out absurd numbers of demonstrators, and that the news reports them as if they were absolute truth.
But even if we assume that there were a thousand people there, what are the thousand compared to the 40,<>? Why deal again and again with the few demonstrators, and ignore the huge procession itself? Why not tell the real news story?
A substantive news broadcast, if it decided to deal with the protest instead of the march, should at least have led the journalists to examine who the marchers are, what their motives are, whether they support Israel, or also its leaders. It could have raised difficult questions, such as: Could the protest damage Israel's reputation? Does anyone think about the day after?
But none of that was. At the end of dealing with the protests in New York, Yonit Levy, the anchor of the edition, concluded: "In normal times we would have been very happy about the march in support of Israel, but we are not in normal times, and attention has shifted elsewhere." And that, gentlemen, is the heart of the matter.
In recent months, we have become accustomed to a left-wing media mobilized "full-fledged" against the reform and the government. Viewers are no longer surprised when they encounter biased coverage. It's just that the public isn't always aware of issues that don't even come to its attention, because they fall in the editing room. These items will not reach the small screen at home, because they may create the impression that the government has supporters, that Israel is not collapsing economically, and perhaps that the coalition is functioning.
Regular viewers don't usually get to peek into the news cutting room and see what won't reach them. But here, for a moment, they could see how it worked. Here's a topic that deserves news coverage – but the presenters and editors choose not to deal with it, because this is not the time to rejoice at the march. Attention is on a handful of protesters who make the lives of elected officials miserable — because that's what matters now, not the usual, universal criteria of news. Indeed, Yonit, days are not normal.
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