https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/analysis/why-the-media-is-drawn-is-to-israel/2021/08/04/
Have you ever wondered why the international media is drawn to Israel?
Arab/Israeli Conflict Offers a Compelling War Story
The late Tamar Liebes, a professor of communication at the Hebrew University, opined that the Israeli-Arab conflict offers a compelling war story in which the front lines are frequently shifting, the front and rear boundaries are not clearly defined, they cannot be excluded, there is often no clear winner, and the media’s focus is on “the unexpected within the expected.” The ongoing nature of the war has created a longstanding infrastructure of foreign correspondents, facilitating the opportunity for other reporters to file stories once they arrive on the scene.
The best method to evaluate the significance of a story to a news organization is to count the number of staff assigned to the country asserts Israeli Journalist Matti Friedman. When Friedman was a correspondent at the Associated Press, the agency hired more than 40 staffers to cover Israel, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. This was considerably more than the AP employed in China, Russia, India, or in all the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was even greater than the entire number in the nations where the “Arab Spring” ultimately broke out.
According to the Foreign Press Association in Israel, there are currently 380 members representing TV, radio, photojournalists, print and web media from 32 countries in the country. Journalist Stephanie Gutmann said this comparatively large number of permanently assigned journalists, which at times included a hundred or more free-lance journalists, writers, photographers, and film makers who were in search of a new angle on the conflict or an exposé.
Danny Seaman, who for approximately 10 years served as director of the Israel Government Press Office (GPO), which is part of the Office of the Prime Minister and responsible for the foreign media in Israel, is concerned that the large number of reporters come to Israel instead of other countries where there is a conflict, because Israel makes it very easy for them. Israel is a modern, open, democratic state and in terms of size quite manageable. Though there are no new approaches to understanding the Arab/Israeli conflict, this does not stop the reporters from trying to find new ones in the hope of winning a Pulitzer Prize. It is “like there’s nothing else going on in the world,” Seaman said.
He is also disturbed they come to Israel without the slightest notion of what is happening in the country. They meet Arabs and Israelis from the same socio-economic background, and the journalists “live off” what they learn from their colleagues and Haaretz, Israel’s oldest, most influential daily newspaper and the newspaper most critical of Israeli government policies.
Israel No Longer “Enjoys the Benefit of the Doubt”
Zev Chafets, a former director of the Israel Government Press Office (GPO) and a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, said there was a period in the Middle East, when American journalists and editorial writers favored Israel over the Arab states because Israel is an open society. Once reassessing Israel’s policies became in vogue, many editors and correspondents adopted a “neutral” and an “even handed” approach in their reporting. Israel no longer enjoyed “the benefit of the doubt.” those with “little or no ideological bent” relished in debunking “myths” about the Jewish state. In their quest for a new slant on the conflict, they found one. “Arabs biting Jews had long ceased to be news; but Jews biting Arabs—that was a story.”
Systematic Effort to Manipulate The Media