Why should he tolerate it? Guy Peleg in "Studio Friday" (Screenshot, Keshet 12)
Even in the "Studio Friday" circus, which saw one or two disgraces and quite a few puzzling panelists, it turns out that there are other rabbits in this field.
The reputation of Guy Peleg, the veteran legal reporter for Channel 12 News, is one of the finest in his field. Only recently did he receive another stamp as a recipient of the Sokolov Prize for Journalism, one of Israel's most significant honors to journalists. But instead of years of achievement and professionalism bringing him respect, he is now forced to sit on a panel and get mud from figures like Gilad Sharon.
Sharon is neither a journalist nor an expert, but rather a junior and unimportant political activist who did not succeed in entering the Knesset. He's not articulate or original, and worst of all, he just doesn't speak to the point. When asked about the state of the legal revolution, he talks about a low penalty area – an issue that is not even part of the package of anti-democratic laws on the agenda – and along the way tries to inflame passions with irrelevant stories about violence in the Negev. When asked about a political strategy vis-à-vis the United States regarding the nuclear agreements, he babbles about a military attack on Iran as a deterrent during an operation in Gaza, as if it were not a far-fetched and infantile fantasy. In other words, he doesn't contribute anything to Studio Six. No contra, no other opinion, no valuable sentences - just unclear noise and not really related to the conversation. God knows why it's there.
Hollow attack. Gilad Sharon (Screenshot, Keshet 12)
It is a person's right to be degraded in public if that is his will. But the bare minimum when you're a guest on a news editorial board is not to throw up on the hosts. When Peleg remarked that it was hard to imagine an attack on Iran during a round with Gaza, when in recent operations the defense establishment has tried not to bring Hamas into the circle of fire, the insulted Sharon turned to him with sickening rudeness. "Your attitude is merely hostile to everything that has been done. It doesn't matter," Sharon slammed, "I know why you're bothering you. You are full of hatred for the Likud." Peleg's tired eye-roll said it all: Why was he supposed to tolerate this?
After all, what is Sharon actually saying in his hollow words? That there is nothing to listen to a veteran journalist whose record is worthless, whose position is superfluous, and as a result, whose editorial board serves as a senior commentator is not serious. Therefore, a current affairs program and a self-respecting news editorial board were supposed to kick Sharon out of the studio and immediately (Dana Weiss made do with a very weak statement and moved on, and in any case it is her editors who need soul-searching). It's one thing to argue, and another to try to downplay and unjustifiably tarnish a journalist and accuse him of lack of professionalism - in his studio. After all, this is not media criticism, but just a hollow, populist attack with nothing substantive behind it. Want to throw mud? That's what Twitter is for. Speaking on the flagship program of the largest television news system—with all its innumerable shortcomings and problems—is a privilege, not a necessity.
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It's time for a new equation. Studio Friday(Screenshot, Keshet 12)
This case, of course, is not unusual, unfortunately. Too often, political interviewees allow themselves, instead of answering questions, to attack interviewers and the channels they interview when they don't have a good enough answer. With politicians literally inciting against journalists on other platforms in the background, the time has come, as military analysts say, to create a new equation: those who do not respect the work of a journalistic system in the most basic way should not be invited to it. The media is in a battle for its honor. It should not help those who wish to fight it on its own initiative.
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