Summary: | Based on interviews with 32 leading Israeli journalists, this paper intends to probe the discourse of Israeli journalists reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on Israeli democracy.
The main outcome of the study is a major gap between what the journalists said had been written and broadcasted and what they said should have been written and broadcasted. This gap implies that a significant segment of the media was actually only “tactically” critical of the government and lacked any deeper “strategic” analysis of the pandemic and its related political crisis including the fragility of Israel’s democracy. What follows, in our view, from this gap is that Israel’s democracy has reached a dangerous crossroads.
|