Naively, I was under the impression that the days of Mapai (a left-wing political party dissolved in 1968) were over. Apparently I was wrong. During those days, journalism had only one angle the media's job was to glorify and praise the party's members and affiliates in any and all public positions. Every written text was presented as pure prophecy, and every failure was spun as a magnificent success. The gullible public tended to believe the reports, and thus for decades Mapai controlled public opinion and Israeli politics.
Even the sports reporters back then took part in the public relations bonanza. Every time hapoel sports teams (affiliated with the Left) won, the media would declare a holiday, and when they lost, the headlines focused on the players who fought like lions.
The terrible humiliation of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which the fully recruited media played quite a significant role, ended this festival of media hypocrisy. The public stopped believing the media reports, and right-winger Menachem Begin and his Likud party won the election, managing to launch a political revolution right over the media's head.
Now it appears that Yesh Atid is trying to bring back those days of media complicity. The ministers of finance, education and welfare have all struck bizarre deals with Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. As the website Walla reported on Monday, in exchange for a handsome sum, the paper has agreed to market and promote these government ministries, headed by Yesh Atid members. I am having trouble finding the precise words to describe the symbiotic relationship between the newspaper (which once controlled the country but has now lost its influence) and the ministers that constantly need to boost their standing among the public. They need these boosts because of a growing sense that Yesh Atid's grandiose campaign promises were in fact empty ones.
Soon, we will be able to read in the papers that the Israeli education system is among the best in the world; that Israeli high school graduates are well versed in Jewish heritage and Western culture; that doing away with the Meitzav standardized test was in fact a stroke of genius from the education minister. Within months, it will emerge in the media that poverty has been reduced dramatically and that the finance and welfare ministers are actually bona fide magicians.
I have no doubt that an agreement that combines marketing and news content runs contrary to the basic guidelines of journalistic ethics. Advertisements and news articles are often in clear conflict with one another. Any self-respecting newspaper would do anything to avoid mixing between the two. The Israeli public is no longer naïve, and has learned to read between the lines. It is a shame, however, that a political party that claims to promote change and a new, more transparent type of politics has now, not long after being elected, turned out to be in need of paid public relations, at the expense of the people.
Ministers of finance, education and welfare, please tell me that this was all just a bad dream.
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו