Reporters need helmets, body armor, and psychological support. What challenges do media in Israel face?

Society unanimous about demanding an investigation

One of the pri­ma­ry queries raised imme­di­ate­ly after 7 Octo­ber 2023 inva­sion is this: how did the armed forces, intel­li­gence, and spe­cial ser­vices per­mit it to occur? There are still no clear answers. Only a few pre­lim­i­nary pre­dic­tions were made, such as not notic­ing the uncom­mon sig­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion activ­i­ty in the Gaza Strip, trust­ing pro­pa­gan­da from Hamas, and oth­ers.

“Obvi­ous­ly, the attack had been planned for months and was kept secret,” says Anat Sara­gusti and imme­di­ate­ly warns that in the event of an alarm, she would have to inter­rupt our con­ver­sa­tion and go down to the bomb shel­ter. “Hamas mil­i­tants man­aged to dis­able the warn­ing devices, but Israeli intel­li­gence did not cau­tion against the threat. This came as a shock because our gov­ern­ment has always boast­ed that we have one of the strongest armies in the world, the best tech­nol­o­gy, the best intel­li­gence ser­vices.”

The jour­nal­ist calls what hap­pened a col­lapse. Israelis keep ask­ing each oth­er: where were the politi­cians? The soci­ety has clear­ly artic­u­lat­ed a request for an inves­ti­ga­tion, which is already being launched by the country’s biggest media out­lets. In this sense, great expec­ta­tions are placed on jour­nal­ists.

“While the government has been silent, the media has shown their great worth”

Anat Sara­gusti said there was a lack of infor­ma­tion amid the shock after the Hamas inva­sion. The pub­lic was wait­ing for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on what to expect and how to pro­ceed. But the politi­cians remained silent.

“At first, gov­ern­ment agen­cies did not pro­vide infor­ma­tion,” she says. “How­ev­er, the media showed their great worth. While the gov­ern­ment stayed silent, the media were grad­u­al­ly reveal­ing details of how the mil­i­tants man­aged to infil­trate across the bor­der.”

The spokesper­son for the Israeli Union of Jour­nal­ists does not wish to high­light any spe­cif­ic media out­let and under­scores that all media out­lets have exhib­it­ed cohe­sion by putting aside their dis­par­i­ties. Per­haps except for a TV chan­nel that broad­casts the views of right-wing politi­cians.

Views on Israeli news sites, YouTube videos, and the num­ber of sub­scribers to media accounts on Telegram have sky­rock­et­ed. This best demon­strates the demand for impor­tant infor­ma­tion.

Media sector losses: two dead, one missing

В первые же часы атаки террористов жертвами нападения

In the first hours of the ter­ror­ist attack, sev­er­al jour­nal­ists fell vic­tim to the attack. They, like many oth­er cit­i­zens, were in the south of the coun­try in their homes ear­ly in the morn­ing.

One of them was Roy Idan, who man­aged to take sev­er­al pic­tures, includ­ing of mis­sile tracks in the sky. He was last seen by neigh­bors with his 3‑year-old daugh­ter in his arms. The jour­nal­ist was cov­ered in blood and prob­a­bly suf­fered a gun­shot wound. His where­abouts are cur­rent­ly unknown. Idan’s fam­i­ly and friends believe he was kid­napped with the child and may be held hostage in the Gaza Strip.

Accord­ing to the Israeli Union of Jour­nal­ists, two oth­er media rep­re­sen­ta­tives were vic­tim­ized by the gun­men. One is a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who lived in the South. The oth­er is an army radio pro­duc­er who was at a par­ty a few kilo­me­ters from the Gaza Strip.

“Not everyone is able to deal with what they see alone”

Over the past week, jour­nal­ists from dozens of West­ern media out­lets have trav­eled to Israel, includ­ing crews from major TV chan­nels: ABC, CBS, BBC, and oth­ers. Thanks to reporters, hor­ri­fy­ing accounts of the Hamas attack are flood­ing the world’s pub­lic space.

“Jour­nal­ists work in dan­ger, so they often request body armor and hel­mets,” explains Anat Sara­gusti. “They also ask for psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port, which we offer to media work­ers. Not every­one is able to deal with what they see alone.”

Fakes: outright deception and splintering narratives

Local media show their com­mit­ment to pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards and under­stand the bur­den of their respon­si­bil­i­ty, as empha­sized by the Israeli Union of Jour­nal­ists rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

“Many videos are now emerg­ing and are being wide­ly shared on social media and mes­sag­ing apps. How­ev­er, not all of them are trust­wor­thy, and some are delib­er­ate­ly spread around to cause dis­in­for­ma­tion,” Anat Sara­gusti stat­ed. “Many of these false­hoods per­tain to indi­vid­u­als who are report­ed miss­ing. In this sense, most media out­lets scru­ti­nize facts before releas­ing sen­si­tive data.”

His­tor­i­cal­ly, a stan­dard has emerged in a war­ring coun­try – wait­ing for per­mis­sion from secu­ri­ty agen­cies before pub­licly announc­ing the death of a ser­vice­man or police­man. The imme­di­ate fam­i­ly and rel­a­tives are noti­fied first. And only then does the media get the right to pub­li­cize sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion.

There is also an estab­lished prac­tice of respond­ing to fakes that are reg­u­lar­ly thrown in via social net­works and mes­sag­ing apps. As a rule, the media man­age to refute them quite quick­ly, notes the BAJ inter­locu­tor.

Here is one recent exam­ple. A video of an Israeli woman with her chil­dren, alleged­ly released by Hamas, began cir­cu­lat­ing in Telegram feeds. It was pre­sent­ed as an act of mer­cy.

It turns out this sto­ry is com­plete­ly false. Jour­nal­ists quick­ly found out that the woman’s name was Avi­tal Aljam and that no one had kid­napped her. An impor­tant fact: the chil­dren of her friend killed by mil­i­tants were next to her in the video.

“Anoth­er form of false infor­ma­tion aims at split­ting Israeli soci­ety,” adds Anat Sara­gusti. “There are claims that pro­test­ers against judi­cial reform are to blame for the army’s unpre­pared­ness dur­ing the Hamas inva­sion.”

Accord­ing to her, it breeds mis­trust and fuels hatred and feel­ings of revenge. Deal­ing with such a chal­lenge will be a non-triv­ial task for Israeli soci­ety. In this case, the media’s role can­not be exag­ger­at­ed.

Turning crisis into an opportunity

The great­est expec­ta­tions of the pub­lic, of course, are relat­ed to the cov­er­age of the fight­ing and the eval­u­a­tion of the government’s deci­sions. Politi­cians have yet to hold them­selves account­able for the last week’s events.

“There needs to be a com­plete inves­ti­ga­tion into the most dev­as­tat­ing occur­rence in Israel’s his­to­ry,” Anat Sara­gusti shares the pop­u­lar view­point. “It’s evi­dent that the gov­ern­ment offi­cials are account­able for the incur­sion, for aban­don­ing cit­i­zens to con­front armed rebels, and for the ini­tial days of halt­ing gov­ern­ment pro­ceed­ings.”

Jour­nal­ists are expect­ed to give a detailed exposé of the events of the last few days. This is a gen­er­al opin­ion that is not ques­tioned.

“As an Israeli cit­i­zen, I hope that this cri­sis will end the con­flict with the Pales­tini­ans,” con­cludes BAJ’s inter­locu­tor. “I would like to believe that we will use what has hap­pened as an oppor­tu­ni­ty. And the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion will not hap­pen again.”

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