The Media Got the Israeli Election Completely Wrong Daniel Greenfield
https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273437/media-got-israeli-election-completely-wrong-daniel-greenfield
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings, but unless things change dramatically, Prime Minister Netanyahu is likely to form Israel’s next government. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Anyone studying the electoral math of Israel’s next government, one that is based on coalitions, not direct elections, would have had trouble coming to any other conclusion. While two startup right-wing parties appear to have committed the usual egocentric folly of wasting votes by failing to meet the threshold, as did the bizarre Gesher, the numbers are on the side of the right.
Only once the exit polls had begun coming in, did the media slowly tilt toward reporting a likely Netanyahu victory, but even so headlines covered Benny Gantz’s silly victory speech and depicted the results as a rebuke.
Considering that Likud’s numbers appear to be better than they have in a while, that’s some rebuke.
Israel’s political system (like those of most free countries) is somewhat weird. It’s understandable that the media might have trouble grasping it. But the media appeared not to care, taking its signals from those lefty Israeli reporters willing to tell it what it wanted to hear.
And this keeps happening in every Israeli election. Each time, Netanyahu’s victory is implausible and unimaginable until it actually happens.
The media runs with the usual shallow narrative, “Netanyahu won by appealing to racism”. We( haven’t heard this spin since the last election.) While displaying no interest in educating itself about how Israeli politics actually work or why it continues misreporting every election.
Past jornos could be anti-Israel, but they were more likely to understand how things work. The modern media doesn’t care about how things work, but about having the right messaging.
Comments are closed.
