Hundreds of journalists and media workers gathered at Tzavta Theater in Tel Aviv on Sunday, July 14, for an “Emergency Meeting to Save Channel 13” to protest the abrupt cancellation of a prominent investigative television show, amid an executive shakeup that would put an associate of far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in charge of the network’s news division.
“War Zone,” Channel 13’s most-watched program, is run by veteran political correspondent Raviv Drucker who has long been a thorn in Netanyahu’s side. The network’s recently appointed CEO, US-Argentinian Emiliano Calemzuk, announced the show’s cancellation on Friday. The decision came a month after Channel 13’s board of directors named Yulia Shamalov Berkovich, a former member of Knesset allied with Netanyahu, as the next head of the network’s news department.
Speaking at the Emergency Meeting on Sunday, Drucker said: “Our biggest enemy is the feeling that we’re against a powerful, sophisticated monster, that we are no match for it, and that there is no point to the struggle. However, we can win.”
Raviv Drucker speaking at the “Emergency Meeting to Save Channel 13“, Sunday, July 14, 2024 (Photo: Union of Journalists in Israel)
Golan Yochpaz, a former CEO of the news division who is currently the executive director of Kan, Israeli Public Broadcasting Service warned that the public broadcaster was “next in line.” “Israeli media is in a fight for survival,” said Yochpaz, saying that if the fight is lost, “democracy will pay a heavy price and may never be able to return to itself.” Anat Saragusti, who leads the freedom of the press division at Israel’s journalists’ organization, said that “what is happening at the Channel 13 news is part of a master plan to destroy the freedom of the press.” “It’s no coincidence that Drucker’s program is the first they want to destroy,” said Saragusti. “It;s no coincidence that it happens after the appointment of a CEO with no relevant journalism skills.”
Journalists at the channel, led by figures like Baruch Kra, an investigative journalist who has reported on Netanyahu’s trials and the judicial overhaul, and the head of the journalists’ union at Channel 13, Matan Hodorov, a senior economics commentator, along with Drucker, have been campaigning against the appointment, citing Shamalov-Berkovich’s political ties to the Likud party and Netanyahu and past misogynic statements on women’s rights. Their campaign includes a High Court petition.
Channel 13 is owned by Ukrainian-American oligarch and oil magnate Len Blavatnik, has previously been accused of neutering the network to cater to Netanyahu. In 2020, the channel fired over 40 journalists, including some of Netanyahu’s most prominent critics. The Haaretz newspaper reported at the time that when testifying to police in one of Netanyahu’s corruption cases, Blavatnik said that the premier had urged his 2016 acquisition of the ailing network then in its past iteration as Channel 10.
According the Haaretz editorial published on Sunday, “The decision by Channel 13 to take Raviv Drucker’s War Zone off the air – the station’s strongest and most viewed news program – is purely a political decision, contravening all financial and journalistic logic. This means one thing: Channel 13 has been conquered. The Bibi-ism flag flies over it, and a clear message was delivered to the subjects still employed there: you serve the government here.”
The far-right government campaign against the press as intensified post-October 7 and amid the Gaza war, as the media manipulation also aims to obscure the severity of the situation, normalize the occupation and dehumanize Palestinians. Statements by Netanyahu-aligned journalists have been so extreme during the deadly war that some were cited in the International Court of Justice case against Israel. Israel’s blocking of foreign journalists from entering Gaza can also be seen as part of this effort, along with the new “Al Jazeera Law,” which officially bans the Qatari channel from operating in Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=31721
