Halfway into our conversation, Oren Persico makes a startling confession. The veteran Israeli journalist, whose job for the better half of the last tw

The ‘pact of silence’ between Israelis and their media

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2024-10-19 18:30:04

Halfway into our conversation, Oren Persico makes a startling confession. The veteran Israeli journalist, whose job for the better half of the last two decades has been to monitor his country’s media, doesn’t watch mainstream Israeli news.

“I just can’t do it,” Persico, who has worked as a staff writer for the Israeli media watchdog site The Seventh Eye since 2006, tells me. “It’s depressing and infuriating — it’s propaganda, it’s full of lies. Mostly, it’s a mirror image of the society I live in, and it’s hard for me to break the dissonance between my worldview and my surroundings. I need to maintain my sanity.” Instead of watching, Persico stays abreast by scrolling through news sites, social media, and watching select clips that people send his way.

But even turning off the TV cannot stop the dissonance and despair Persico feels, which have only grown since the Hamas-led massacres on October 7 and the Israeli army’s ensuing year-long onslaught on the Gaza Strip. When the war began, the Israeli media found itself at a critical juncture, navigating the trauma of a nation that was shaken by unprecedented violence and quickly retreated into a deeply-entrenched perception of historical victimhood. News broadcasters responded to this national trauma, Persico notes, by slipping further into the clutches of state-sanctioned propaganda.