So, it was with great pleasure that I disovered my good friend, Ruthie Blum, interviewed Erel Segal of Latma.
Excerpts:
'One thing I can't stand is the whininess of the Right," says Makor Rishon writer and radio host Erel Segal to explain his own very different style of self-expression...But "Latma" (latma.co.il) is a novelty nevertheless.
This is because the new Hebrew Web site, created by Jerusalem Post senior contributing editor and columnist Caroline Glick to counter what she considers the "egregious leftist slant of news coverage in this country," provides a right-wing critique of the media through the use of comedy...
..."THE MEDIA here are homogeneous and leave no room for dissent," says Segal. "They are leftist, Ashkenazi, secular, Tel Aviv-centric, who all believe that the sun rises from their backsides, and who all tan themselves in its rays."
...To what end?
To alter the swing of the pendulum, as a way of balancing out the media, all of which march to the beat of the same leftist drummer. We want people to think critically about the quality of the information they receive. We believe that once that begins to happen, we'll be able to build a new national conversation in this country that is more relevant to what is actually happening here, in the region and throughout the world. And we believe that the best way to get people to think is to first make them laugh.
...You claim that the media here are all enlisted on the Left. Yet, they were made fun of on Eretz Nehederet, for being uniformly enlisted on the side of the government during Operation Cast Lead. How do you explain this?
All that shows is how leftist our satire - as reflected in shows like Eretz Nehederet - is. After all, what were they complaining about? That most of the media sided with Israel in our war against Hamas. Being on your own country's side in time of war - particularly when the war is being waged by a leftist government on the eve of elections - does not exactly make a person a right winger.
Do you think that if Binyamin Netanyahu had been prime minister during the war in Gaza, the media would have behaved differently?
No question about it. A right-wing government would have found it very difficult to conduct that operation with media backing.
What difference does that make? What effect does it really have on the public?
Perception creates reality...When Menachem Begin became prime minister in 1977, power was concentrated in the hands of the government. After his election, power shifted to academia and the media. Not recognizing the transition, Begin did not clean out the stables. He left his political opponents in charge of the state-owned media and, hence, in control of the information the public received...
...Aren't you exaggerating about the media's having a uniform, left-leaning agenda? Today, every channel has a religious reporter, and there is always at least one religious/right-wing commentator participating on political panels.
Who are these reporters? Do you hear them express their views? Are they on the level of [Channel 2's] Amnon Abramovitch? No. They are more like tokens, and they are neither as important as the others, nor earn as much money. They hold the status of Jewish court jester. This paradigm was changed in America, with the emergence of talk radio, FOXNews and the conservative blogosphere, which all gave legitimacy to more conservative opinions. Here, there is no such thing...There is certainly no pluralism on Israel Radio or Army Radio. In local radio, there might be a bit more, but only slightly, and it's not connected to ideology, but rather to commercial concerns.
...What kind of journalistic sacred cows do you thing need slaughtering?
Army Radio, for example. Why does it still exist? I mean, what's up with that? By the same token, why not have an IDF catering company competing with civilian caterers? It's ridiculous. Why is it the role of the IDF to train journalists? Then there's Israel Radio. It's about time that the Nakdi document, which says there has to be balance between Left and Right, is implemented. [Published as the Guidelines for Coverage of News and Current Affairs in 1995, the doctrine was first introduced in 1972 by the Israel Broadcasting Authority. It is named for its original author, Nakdimon Rogel.]
There's the language, as well, that the media use to describe reality. For instance, terrorists are "activists," and so are Jews who don't want to be thrown out of their homes. There is an equalization of guilty and innocent, in language whose clear purpose is to make it difficult for the public to understand which end is up.
Finally, there are all the pompous media celebrities who believe that just because they have good hair, the public should care what they have to say. We intend to bring them down several dozen notches...
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