Over the past three months, the foundations of Israeli society have been shaken. One of the most severe manifestations of this is the targeting of journalists. How can one tolerate a situation in which a person goes to work in the morning only to get attacked and end up in the hospital simply because he was doing his job?ย
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The recent brutal attack on our colleague Yossi Eli from Channel 13 News was not even the worst of all the attacks against journalists over the past several months. The growing incitement against media outlets is not new; a whole host of media personas have experienced it in recent years simply because they were at the scene where the news was breaking. For once, perhaps we could stop with the comparisons of Right vs. Left on this. It doesn't matter which side of the political divide is the aggressor. It doesn't matter whom people tried to silence more; it is high time to realize that when a journalist who covers an event is hit to the point that he has his ribs broken and gets hospitalized is just a reality that is simply intolerable.ย
It feels that journalists are treated as the root of all evil and that they should be blamed for everything. Such an attitude has had protesters sabotage the work of a pregnant female reporter who did her job in one case, and physical attacks in another horrific case.ย
We, journalists, face a dilemma: Cover such events in order to shame such provocateurs that threaten the very fabric of our society or keep them out of the limelight in order to prevent other would-be violent thugs from drawing inspiration from their very exposure.
Should we ignore them to the point that we don't send reporters to cover potentially violent places? Perhaps there is no point in giving the state to the violent people who want to hurt people and silence them a stage; after all, the fascists, the anarchists, and the other agitators are always those who seek out the media. They depend on its attention and they cannot survive without being mentioned on news sites, the papers, or the evening newscasts. The media may not be perfect โ far from it โ and leveling criticism is always welcome. But not when it involves threats and violence.ย
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