In struggling for the free flow of information about the intifada, the Israeli press faces not only military censorship but opposition from large segments of the public, who believe the less news, the better for national security.
“One talks about the public’s right to know,” said Hanna Zemer, editor of the newspaper Davar. “But it turned out that most of the public does not want to know,” she said at a Tel Aviv University symposium Monday.
“The public likes exposure of senior officials and leaders, but the public does not like to expose itself,” Zemer added.
Professor Ephraim Ya’ar, dean of the social sciences faculty at Tel Aviv University, said recent surveys show that more than half the population believes the press has too much freedom in Israel.
More than 60 percent believe that expanded press freedom is harmful to the security of the state, said Ya’ar, who attributed much of that feeling to weariness with news from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But the news media, local and foreign, are constantly demanding more information from the territories, regardless of diminished international interest in the intifada.
The Israel Defense Force, meanwhile, considers itself caught between the conflicting responsibilities of keeping the media informed and preserving security.
IDF spokesman Nahman Shai told the symposium that press freedom has not been curtailed since the Palestinian uprising started more than two years ago.
He said that, frequent criticism notwithstanding, the army insists that the information it feeds the media is accurate and reliable.
The critics have said the army fails to give an accurate update of events, especially in comparison with Arab sources, whose information has gained credibility with the media since the intifada began.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
