A Survey of Israeli Media From 2002

Here is a fascinating 2002 article by David Newman surveying the media landscape in Israel at that time and questioning the assertion that the media in Israel is controlled by leftists. It is entitled Israel: The Myth of Left-Wing Media Control.

Here is the start of this article.

During the past decade, presentation of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the Israeli media has come under attack from the right wing for being biased and manipulative, and for spreading a single, pro-peace message. But contrary to public myth, it is the right wing—not the left—that uses and manipulates the media to disseminate its political message.

The argument put forward by the right wing goes like this: Since the left controls the media, the Israeli public was never presented with an alternative to the pro-peace, pro-Oslo message of the 1990s, and was duped into blindly supporting attempts to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Until, that is, the violence and terror of the past 20 months brought Israelis face to face with reality.

But even a cursory look at daily newspapers in Israel reveals another truth. With the possible exception of the self-styled liberal newspaper Ha’aretz, truly left-wing newspapers have disappeared.

The rest of the article may be read courtesy of worldpress.org.