The ‘Tectonic Shift’ in Media That Changed Perceptions of Israel: ‘What’s Left Is a System Run by Activists’

“The press has been gutted. The bureaus have shrunk, and into that vacuum have come ideological voices,” says Matti Friedman

Sharon Waxman
Pro-Palestinian protestors gather outside of the New York Times building to protest the newspaper’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in December 2023
Pro-Palestinian protestors outside The New York Times building protest coverage of the Israel-Hamas War. (Credit: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

JERUSALEM – It gives journalist Matti Friedman no satisfaction to know he was early to realize that a change had come to covering Israel, favoring fixed narratives and activist journalism over a tradition of fact-based reporting. 

Friedman, a former reporter and editor at the Associated Press based in Jerusalem from 2006-2011, quit the global news agency after being censored by his editors, and realizing he would have to censor what he and his colleagues knew to be true about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And what was the case a decade ago is more true now, he told me. 

“The press has been gutted.

Sharon Waxman

Sharon Waxman

Sharon Waxman, is the founder, CEO and Editor in Chief of TheWrap. She is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author, and was a Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times. Twitter: @sharonwaxman

Comments

23 responses to “The ‘Tectonic Shift’ in Media That Changed Perceptions of Israel: ‘What’s Left Is a System Run by Activists’”

  1. Michael Maratsos Avatar
    Michael Maratsos

    My family and I lived in Israel for 10 months in 1982-1983. We went there as strong supporters of Israel, like most Americans. Among the things we saw there was how American media were slanted to present a favorable picture of Israel, as opposed to what really happened in the country. We also saw that in reality, Arabs were regarded like Indians in the old era of ‘cowboys vs. indians’ in America: stupid, dirty and vicious. We came back with our views sharply reversed from what they had been when we entered the country. (A note: I am of neither Jewish nor Arabic descent, myself). For decades Israel has received heavily biased media coverage in its favor in the American press. Now its actions in Gaza have ended some (not all) of this bias, and what this article is expressing, is actually upset at Israel’s losing this privileged position. I am sure that mistaken reporting happens on both sides, as it is likely to do in war, but what is happening is that the foulness of Israel’s actions and future intentions in Gaza have finally removed some of the favorable biased treatment it has been receiving for decades.

    Reply
    1. Charles Avatar
      Charles

      This is a similar experience to mine. As I got older, I got to see what causes the radical Islam the writer talks about, it it’s massively from the inequity and apartheid nature that Israel has put on the Palestinians. Hamas is evil but Israel has propped it up as it completes with the PLA in the West bank, while “Settlements” aka colonies are built and split the land of the West bank. The extremism was going to happen.

      Reply
      1. ross Avatar
        ross

        Yeah since 634AD. Islam spread upon the pain of death, not young men dressed in short-sleeve shirts with a black tie and slacks riding bicycles. The Kfir must “submit” or will receive death.

        Reply
    2. Tony Longhurst Avatar
      Tony Longhurst

      I’ve been following this conflict since the 6-Day war, and I too have made the journey from staunch Israeli supporter to becoming much more nuanced in my take on the issues. I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the attitudes and mistakes made by both sides, but Israel, as the original instigator and ongoing perpetuator of the problem, deserves more attention than it’s ever received until recently. Israel has been on a mission, since before 1948, to portray the Palestinians as less than civilized, less even than human. A quote from Freidman illustrates this very well: “This is a story about the rise of radical Islam…”. No, it’s a 100-year old+ story about rights to the land. It only became about religion recently and only superficially at that. Saying the problem is all about the rise of Islamic radicalism is another attempt by Israel supporters to define the issues and the Palestinians in a way that furthers their own narrative at the expense of truth and fairness. I’m still supportive of Israel, but I feel pretty hopeless that a solution can be reached until both sides can be brought around to believing in the same same set of historical facts, perhaps an impossible goal. 

      Reply
  2. Dee Avatar
    Dee

    The Press no longer reports the news, they want to make the news. I stopped listening to them a long time ago. They are the Pravda of the Millenium.

    Reply
  3. Steven Avatar
    Steven

    Yep, the reporter Matti Friedman pulled up the carpet and showed the dirt underneath.
    This is when the news media switched to putting out slogans rather than information (Fake News).  The fourth estate news media is no longer a “watch dog”, but rather a tool to attack one’s political enemies through cancel culture and censorship.
    This has resulted in the rise of independent journalism and alternate media.
    The internet has made this possible and now even stronger tools are on the rise.
    AI will made traditional news media as archaic as ox carts.
    The traditional media and government will do everything in their power to shut it down, because it’s an existential threat to their credibility and an even bigger threat to their gravy train economics.
    If traditional journalists are silenced, there are opportunities to find other platforms to express themselves, but the highest priority should be to show the  true colors of the traditional media, and that they are no longer a truthful source of news.

    Reply
  4. Scott Nudds Avatar
    Scott Nudds

    I posted 12 responses to articles on MSN and Yahoo news yesterday concerning the Genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza.

    10 of them were deleted.

    All of them were simply factual in nature.

    Corporate censorship in America has never been more extreme than it is today.

    As to Israel… Nothing but lies come from Israel.

    Reply
  5. Ross Farr Avatar
    Ross Farr

    Weakened by cowardice and with no principles but those fed to them by their twin idols Bureaucracy & Academia, the high-profile denizens of the West no longer pledge allegiance to the truth, but to whatever their parties, influencers, or corporate owners demand. Thus the media commit fraud by omitting such details as that Hamas masquerades as civilians, or that they confiscate supplies meant for civil relief, or that they operate out of hospitals and rape hostages,…etc and the West’s servile leadership cows in turn.

    Reply
    1. Scott Nudds Avatar
      Scott Nudds

      Didn’t Israeli soldiers masquerade as civilian doctors and nurses so that they could enter a Gaza hospital and murder patients being treated there?

      Yes they did.

      Reply
  6. Raymond Pugh Avatar
    Raymond Pugh

    The only documented accusation of rape with a “confession” was coerced under standard Israeli interrogation techniques such as the “Palestinian Chair” taught to US torturers at Abu Ghraib.

    Reply
    1. Scott Nudds Avatar
      Scott Nudds

      Correct.

      Even Palestinian doctors are reporting that they were abducted by Israel, and tortured.

      Reply
    2. Jarvis Sadoq Avatar
      Jarvis Sadoq

      Really? That’s the only documented accusation of rape? The only response to this is to question your ability to articulate yourself properly, or to search Google, the NY Times, the BBC, The Guardian, etc. Your mind isn’t all there, is it.

      Reply
      1. anonymous Avatar
        anonymous

        a so called palestinian Dr (who thankfully was killed freeing the hostage)was also involved in keeping the female israeli hostage as a slave so the covers and fronts of Drs and hospitals and humanitarian relief has now been exposed as terrorists, rapists, and hostage taking terror fronts being funded by an Iranian genocide empire trying to commit another holocaust. Anyone that argues on behalf of these war criminal rapists and their support groups should be looked at as the new faces of hate that go in history next to Nazis, KKK, and terrorist groups funded by islamonazi rapists Mullahs who are advocates of evil and the new face of hitler in Iran.

        Reply
  7. Sam I am Avatar
    Sam I am

    This opinion piece is written as if the reduction in establishment media correspondents and the proliferation of social media are the issue, not the genocide.  I can hear the freaking out inside your heads – losing what you’ve assumed would always be the case – controlling the narrative.  

    In an era where people have lost trust in the media and institutions, people are finding more truth with their eyes watching people mowed down trying to get food, rather than the bias that has been built into what is not covered, how it is languaged as a passive death versus killing or starvation, and how Western media routinely just takes IDF press releases and issues them as fact without fact checking.  The reason Western reporters are not in Gaza is because Israel won’t let them in.

    Omitting history and context is the grey area you won’t acknowledge, while forgetting these truths shall always prevail: Genocide is always wrong.  Civilian targets are always wrong.  Starvation and ethnic cleansing is always wrong.  But keep up the idea of this being because ABC reduced headcount and can’t spew out the passive language. People know that babies are being massacred and starved, and smartphone cameras, not the political lobby, will have the final word.

    Reply
    1. Sharon Waxman Avatar
      Sharon Waxman

      This kind of makes my point. Your view is entirely reductive and succumbs to the black and white, binary narrative that is convenient but not reflective of reality. You throw around the very catch phrases and labels that feel good but, again, don’t reflect actual knowledge of the reality in Gaza. I’m sorry you missed the entire point of my piece. 

      Reply
      1. Sam I am Avatar
        Sam I am

        Just because you use catch-phrases like “reductive” and “binary narrative” does not make this a think piece. “It’s complicated” is a great way to shut down discourse when you disagree with it.  The narrative is shifting due to the actual genocide happening live on your smartphone, not the number of reporters NBC imbeds with the IDF to parrot their talking points.

        Yesterday, 7 people with the WCK in Gaza whose mission was to distribute food to starved civilians were killed by an Israeli airstrike.  This was reported by the WCK and confirmed by Palestinian sources on the ground before it hit all news sources. This bombing replicates thousands of similar events over the last six months over ordinary Palestinian children, women and men. The war crimes are well documented by the UN and International Courts; none of this you acknowledge. According to your logic, it’s not true until someone ‘trustworthy’ reports on it, and the WCK would be lumped in with radical left-wing human rights orgs. 

        Just because you use

        Reply
  8. Scott Nudds Avatar
    Scott Nudds

    I was just told by an Israeli that “No Palestinians have been killed.”

    “Just Dogs”

    Reply
    1. Bobby Byrd Avatar
      Bobby Byrd

      That works for me. Exterminate hamass.

      Reply
  9. Rebel Avatar
    Rebel

    Nobody is believing a word of anything written by a Zionist anymore…  The author is a Zionist, Friedman is a very “Gentile” name…   The fact is Zionists own and control 70% of the newspapers in the USA, 80% of the radio airwaves in the USA & 75% of broadcast TV…yet they comprise less than 2% of the US population…retribution is coming…

    Reply
    1. Matthew Egel Avatar
      Matthew Egel

      Take your racist/anti-semitic conspiracy theories elsewhere.

      Reply
  10. Eli Avatar
    Eli

    Facts. Israel expelled its citizens and gave gaza to the gazans over 20 years ago with the expectation that it would become a ME singapore like paradise… yep the gazans turned it into a retched terrorist base… facts are now radioactive, that’s how we have the queers for palestine… their narrative has become the religion of the left… facts the cardinal sin of … without their narrative their life falls apart, so they fight with their lives for their narrative… unfortunately their religion is bringing them to their end… …

    Reply
  11. Andrade Avatar
    Andrade

    This article argues that Americans mistakenly think that the Israeli-Hamas conflict is about inequality. It argues that this is due to the transition from an old-school, fact-based press (which has been gutted) to a younger generational, value-based activist journalism that favors ideological voices… of the hard left.

    Evidence is providing in the differing accounts of the shelling of al-Ahli hospital, the IDF’s second military operation at al-Shifa hospital, and The Intercept’s challenge of a NYT piece claiming a pattern of rape by Hamas on Oct 7th. The article concludes that Israeli-Hamas conflict is in fact about the rise of radical Islam in the middle east and in parts of Africa. This is a non-sequitur.

    No facts/discussion are provided related to Islam, other nations, or inequality. The article does not mention the ongoing siege, starvation and famine of Gazan civilians. It does not mention recent Security Council binding resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, or the ongoing ICJ case regarding potential genocide brought on by South Africa. The South African delegates described it as apartheid, which is a state policy of racial segregation and inequality.

    Reply
  12. anonymous Avatar
    anonymous

    these are just advocates of rapists and baby dismembering islamic rape terrorists no different than the nazis other than the hamas iranian gazan nazis may be worse as they recorded their own atrocities. Ignorance is at an all time high and this mislead generation has been lied to by companies that pushed anti semetic racism and the nazi parrots millenials which support these iranian pro genocide advocates of rape and ethnic cleaning of minorities. Democrats now support terrorists and are anti semetic just like the muslim brotherhood which sponsored al qaeda previously. Democrats are hamas patrons and have blood of americans on their hands as 8 americans are raped and tortured daily by the hamas rapists these nazi advocates are supporting. they are on the wrong side of history and the democrats are siding with ethnic cleaning minority genocide states like china and iran, IT is not the part of minorities, who do you think will be next once the dems help iran kill all jews, the latinos and blacks will be next, dont trust ethnic cleansing racist democrats or pro terrorists islamic rapists of gaza

    Reply

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