Really? The Media Is Left?

Poll: Hebrew media turns Israelis left

Israelis' political views have been pushed to the left by their country's various Hebrew media sources, according to a new poll.

Nearly 80 percent of the 500 people polled by the Tel Aviv-based Geocartography Knowledge Group believe that Israel's Hebrew media outlets influence their audience, rather than reflect its views, and 53% of those polled said that those outlets support and attempt to advance leftist viewpoints.

Abraham Sion, a law professor and chair of the Center for Law and Mass Media at the Ariel University Center of Samaria, which commissioned the study, believes that when taken together, those two statistics show that the Hebrew media is one of the main factors in forming the Israeli public's general political orientation.

...The percentages of Israelis who saw a left-leaning Hebrew media were higher among religious people (73%) and people aged 18-34 (60%).

"Young people today are much more aware of the media's influence than they were 10 or 20 years ago," Sion said. "They've grown up with the Internet, which older people didn't have when they were that age. The media has played a much larger role in their lives."

A much lower percentage (14%) believed that a right-wing bias exists within the Hebrew media, and nearly a third of respondents perceived no strong bias in either direction.

But nearly all of the people polled said that they could routinely see journalists' opinions filtering through their work...