Ayala Panievsky

These are challenging times for journalists' relationship with their audiences. Attacks against "the media" and the increasing weaponization of social media to harass journalists have drawn the attention of scholars worldwide. In the current climate, journalists are not only distrusted but also hated, which creates a series of distinct ramifications. In this article, we suggest a new framework to study journalistsaudiences relationship, particularly in times of hostile populism: the imagined journalists approach. A mirror image of the much-studied concept of imagined audiences, imagined journalists refers to the entirety of ideas, feelings, stereotypes, and imaginaries that audiences hold regarding their imagined news producers. It brings together the research on media trust, audiences' perceptions, antimedia populism, and the emotional turn in journalism-to generate a comprehensive understanding of people's criticisms, narratives, and priorities. We demonstrate the potential of this approach by analyzing 1,215 responses to an open-ended question regarding journalists' traits in Israel in 2021. Employing qualitative and quantitative analyses, we find that: (a) right-wing and pro-populist voters hold more negative views of journalists, as expected; (b) voters express three different types of criticism of journalists (professional, personal, and national)-only one of which directly relates to their professional conduct; (c) different types of voters express different types of criticism; and (d) while objectivity and bias remain main concerns, democracy is not

This article examines how and why Israeli journalists use their military service as a shield in response to online violence and digital hate. This practice, termed here the military-as-alibi strategy, is highly consequential. First, it excludes Israeli citizens who are exempt from military service (mostly Palestinian citizens of Israel and ultra-orthodox Jews). Second, it affirms the presumption that “good journalists” are not to be measured by their reporting, but rather by external loyalty tests that allegedly demonstrate their commitment to the national cause. Drawing on analyses of interviews with 20 Israeli journalists, media coverage and social media content, this article frames the military-as-alibi strategy within the local context of a militarised society, but also as part of journalists’ global struggle to win the hearts of their audiences in challenging times. Building on Tuchman (1972), the article labels journalists’ references to their military backgrounds as a strategic ritual of loyalty. The article proposes an alternative strategy to counter anti-press attacks: if journalism is indeed a public good (Pickard 2019), then “good journalism” should be considered “good citizenship”. This approach could free journalists from surrendering to nationalist loyalty tests, and lay better foundations for journalists–audiences relationships in the future.

As populist campaigns against the media become increasingly common around the world, it is ever more urgent to explore how journalists adopt and respond to them. Which strategies have journalists developed to maintain the public's trust, and what may be the implications for democracy? These questions are addressed using a thematic analysis of forty-five semistructured interviews with leading Israeli journalists who have been publicly targeted by Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The article suggests that while most interviewees asserted that adherence to objective reporting was the best response to antimedia populism, many of them have in fact applied a "strategic bias" to their reporting, intentionally leaning to the Right in an attempt to refute the accusations of media bias to the Left. This strategy was shaped by interviewees' perceived helplessness versus Israel's Prime Minister and his extensive use of social media, a phenomenon called here "the influence of presumed media impotence." Finally, this article points at the potential ramifications of strategic bias for journalism and democracy. Drawing on Hallin's Spheres theory, it claims that the strategic bias might advance Right-wing populism at present, while also narrowing the sphere of legitimate controversy-thus further restricting press freedom-in the future.

Various countries have seen a rise in populist rhetoric used by politicians, parties, and movements to discredit journalists, news outlets, and “The Media.” Research indicates that such rhetoric affects the public’s perceptions of the news media, posing a real challenge to professional journalism. Unlike other targets of populist criticism, journalists find themselves required to mediate that criticism to the public, which puts them in a particularly awkward position. Drawing on thematic analysis of 40 semistructured interviews with Israeli journalists who have been publicly scrutinized by Israel’s prime minister, this article suggests that journalists’ interpretation of traditional journalistic norms, and particularly the ethos of objectivity, leads them to amplify the accusations against them, while refraining from refuting them. As journalists confuse objectivity with passivity, the populist criticism turns
into a sophisticated form of “soft” censorship, which uses imagined audiences to manipulate journalists’ professional norms against them.

Threatening critical journalists, flooding media outlets with Netanyahu's loyalists and undermining the financial independence of news organisations: the right-wing assault on press freedom has dramatically changed the media landscape in Israel. But why is this campaign so effective, and how should the left cope with it?

Public opinion polls show that most Israelis support progressive positions. So why are progressive parties failing? How did the liberal-democrat majority come to believe it is a minority? On the ideological success and political failure of the Israeli Left-and where we go from here.

Trump’s speech last week, in which he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and promised to move the American embassy there, was covered intensively – both in Israel and around the world. While the global media focused mainly on the responses to the statement among Palestinian and European leaders, the Israeli media focused on what was described as a historical and dramatic shift in Washington’s stance towards Israel. But what does this “historical achievement” actually mean?

The first head of state expected to condemn the events in Charlottesville – following the American President, of course – was the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Shockingly, it took Netanyahu – famed for a verbal swiftness like no other’s – no less than three days to denounce the neo-Nazi rally, dominated by cries of ‘Sieg Heil!’ and ‘Jews will not replace us!’. Finally, under pressure from the Israeli media, Netanyahu responded with a single tweet, which only appeared in English and on his international Twitter account. The neo-Nazi rampage was nowhere to be found on both of his extremely popular Facebook pages – let alone any mention of Trump’s comments regarding the violence demonstrated ‘on many sides’. How have we come to this?