Currently Online 
Israeli media has largely ‘betrayed its mission’ during Gaza war
Israeli journalist and columnist Gideon Levy said the Israeli media’s coverage of the Gaza war has largely hidden the truth from the public and labelled it “propaganda”.
He added that many journalists in Israel “are totally convinced that quoting the army spokesman is journalism … most people don’t understand what journalism means and I don’t think they will understand soon.”
“We have a free media betraying its mission in an unprecedented and shameful way over the last 22 months,” he said. “And the average Israeli who watches Israeli TV and reads the mainstream Israeli newspaper is not exposed to the truth, but it is exposed to a non-stop stream of brainwash.”
‘Shooting the messenger is now the Israeli agenda’
Ian Williams, president of the Foreign Press Association, says Israel has “boasted” over the killing of journalists in Gaza late on Sunday.
While the Israeli army has denied targeting journalists in the past, this is a “whole new departure and [they] have now declared that journalists are fair game in Gaza,” Williams told Al Jazeera.
Israeli officials are not allowing foreign reporters into Gaza because “they’re trying to control the flow of information”, Williams said. That flow, he added, is “very much dependent” on Palestinian journalists like Al Jazeera’s slain correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who really bravely and beyond the call of duty have been trying to report” what is happening in the Gaza Strip.
“The whole issue of control of information by shooting the messenger is now the Israeli agenda,” he said.
Williams also said the managements of several Western media outlets are “frustrating” the truth by interfering with what their journalists are reporting on.
“Most of the people exposed to the situation in Gaza … know what’s happening,” he said. “But the layers of control” are making it harder for the truth to be told, noted Williams.
