Under a cemetery: a terror tunnel and living quarters of senior Hamas officials/IDF spokesman
"The duty of journalists is to tell the truth. Journalism means going back to the actual facts, looking at the documents, revealing the findings, and reporting it this way."
Noam Chomsky said these words in a lecture in New York in 2004.
This may be a somewhat simplistic version of the profession, and certainly a bit naive in light of the journalism that is done in the world in the 21st century, but in the end it is an exhaustive definition.
I want to believe that Amit Segal, the influential journalist in Israel, signs off on this definition.
It is worth noting that it is very difficult to find journalists, certainly on commercial television channels, who meet Chomsky's strict definition.
There are few journalists who will stop the publication of strong news, even at the cost of giving up cross-referencing.
In the worst case, we apologize in retrospect, but God forbid we don't see our title in push among the competitors.
Everyone who watched "Bottoms in the Dark" in the nineties knows - the truth is somewhere.
It is not clear if Amit Segal is a fan of Mulder and Scully (although it is likely that he admires Justice Scalia) but he also knows how to flirt with the truth, and stretch it to fit his ideology.
Amit Segal/screenshot, Keshet 12
A good example is an old story of his from 2021, which is still on the News 12 website under the title "Protesters broke through a barrier - the Prime Minister and his wife were put into a secure compound". This is a story that was published in all the media at the same time, and it turned out to be much less dramatic than how Amit Segal described it in the studio. This was an unusual case, in which Segal's news company had to clean up the mess he left. A day after the publication of Segal's news, an article by Moshe Nussbaum was published about the same story, in which it was clarified that "no danger of a break-in was perceived, and the protesters did not breach any barrier." Segal called out to Twitter, and tried to ridicule his channel's report.
It was hard not to remember this story while Amit Segal landed another "first publication" in the main edition of News 12. And this time: in the hands of the channel's political commentator a "secret document" from Hamas, which was found "In the area where Sinwar visited, and it seems that a senior official wrote it." Coincidentally, or not, the document greatly serves the narrative of the government's supporters, according to which Hamas wants to make Israelis believe that "Netanyahu is responsible for what happened." The document also specifically talks about "damaging the narrative The Israeli as if the ground operation serves the return of the kidnapped" and also leaves a reference to Gallant as someone who may succumb to psychological pressure.
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The secret document/screenshot, arc 12
What a detailed and interesting document!
It's amazing that everything written in it happens to match exactly the messages coming out of the Prime Minister's office.
The only thing that was missing was some nice knock-out in the style of "we need to mention the close relations of Shakma Bressler to the senior members of our organization", and some explanation about how the terrorists get energy from the demonstrations of the families of the abductees.
It's a shame that the terrorist who wrote this handwritten note didn't also leave links to the "Edna Carnival" website, just for fun.
Is the document authentic?
could very well be.
Does the fact that it was "approved by the censors" prove that it is real?
Definately not.
Personally, I don't believe that Amit Segal would publish a story if he didn't at least believe it was based on truth.
The same can be said about the editors of the edition.
Still, some questions remain, such as how did this document found in a tunnel in Gaza get to him?
If the document came from the army, why wasn't it revealed by a military reporter?
If the document came from within the political system, why was it leaked to the faculty?
And why was Amit Segal not in the studio at the time of the report, which seems to have been delivered in a pre-recorded video - something that prevented Yonet Levy from asking the reporter questions on the subject?
I find it hard to believe that there are people in this country who are naive enough not to know the answers to all these questions.
In the bottom line, it is difficult to ignore the problem of Amit Segal in front of a growing part of the public.
In military parlance, it has a "reliability pack".
These are perhaps the two worst words that can be attached to a journalist.
It could be that the document he published yesterday is completely real, and was leaked to him from an objective source, and the way in which he conveyed the news was rooted in technical constraints.
And yet, the very fact that it is possible to believe that maybe, just maybe, this news was not checked well enough with journalistic tools, and was broadcast only because it fits the journalist's agenda - is Segal's real problem.
It is not certain that this situation is reversible.
More on the same topic:
Amit Segal
News 12
Gaza war
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