by Gil Hoffman
Will the new Channel 14's ideological bend keep it from being accepted into mainstream Israeli television culture?
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Opposition head Benjamin Netanyahu at the opening broadcast of Channel 14, November 27, 2021.
(photo credit: MEIR ELIPOUR)
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When then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost power in 1999,
among the lessons he told his confidants he learned were that he needed a
supportive newspaper and television station.
He
got his newspaper in 2007, when Israel Hayom was first published, and
it did indeed help bring about his comeback two years later. But he
still waited for his own Fox News, the American channel he watches
whenever he works out at the Knesset gym.
It
took an American billionaire in the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson
to start Israel Hayom. Now another billionaire, Georgian-born
Euro-Asian Jewish Congress president Mikhael Mirilashvili's son,
businessman Yitzchak Mirilashvili, has taken on the television project,
investing massive sums in the new Channel 14, which premiered on Sunday
night amid great fanfare.
Netanyahu
tweeted about the TV station three times, as did his supporters in the
Likud faction. He was the star of the celebratory opening broadcast,
granting a fawning interview to Channel 14 hosts Yinon Magal and Erel
Segal, who have been among his strongest supporters for many years.
שמחתי להשתתף בשידור הראשון של ערוץ החדשות החדש של ישראל, ערוץ 14. מוזמנים לצפות! https://t.co/bnjAyLaicK
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) November 29, 2021
Throughout the interview, Netanyahu, who is known to snarl at
journalists when he speaks to them, kept smiling widely, as if it was
among the happiest days of his life.
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| Yair Netanyahu, son of former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives for a court hearing on a defamation suit filed by Crime Minister movement, in Tel Aviv, November 29, 2021. (credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90) |
Netanyahu’s son Yair once said he aspired to help form a Fox News-style channel when he grew up. While he is not involved with Channel 14, he helped the channel on Monday, when he shouted at a reporter from the top-rated Channel 12 who came to cover his trial at Tel Aviv District Court, in which he is accused of libeling the heads of the movements that led protests against his father.
“I
call on everyone to stop watching this propaganda channel,” Yair told
the Channel 12 cameras. “You are a hostile, antisemitic propaganda
channel, whose damage to Israel is surmounted only by Iran.”
A
spokesman for Channel 14 admitted that Fox News was its model, from its
state-of-the-art studios in Modi’in that cost NIS 10 million to its
proudly patriotic presenters. He confirmed that one of the changes from
its previous incarnation as Channel 20 is that left-wing fig leaves will
no longer be needed.
“We
are not embarrassed about our views,” the spokesman said. “We will not
hide that we have an agenda and an ideology and show hosts who would not
be allowed to broadcast elsewhere. We love Israel, and we appeal to
viewers who love Israel.”
THE SHIFT from Channel 20 to 14 is intended to bring it numerically and psychologically closer to the three mainstream networks that are at 11, 12 and 13 and give it a more professional reputation. More shows are hosted by women, including rising stars Lital Shemesh, Yaara Zered and Naveh Dromi.
Channel
14 calls itself “Israel’s News Channel,” a moniker its young reporters
will have to prove. The spokesman said the slogan is intended to
emphasize that the channel has “no reality shows, no programs intended
for ratings, only news and issues that people who love Israel care
about.”
There are plenty of kippah wearers among the hosts and the panelists. The channel will not broadcast on Shabbat or holidays.
The channel’s pollster is former Netanyahu bureau chief Shlomo Filber,
who is currently a state’s witness against him, but is anything but
hostile to him and has become business partners with current Netanyahu
advisers.
A poll
he took that was announced on the channel on Monday predicted 35 seats
for Likud, 19 for Yesh Atid and only four seats for Yamina. New Hope
would not cross the electoral threshold. Yamina was not included in the
right-wing bloc.
Commentators
on the channel competed over who could bash Prime Minister Naftali
Bennett the most. The prize was won by Shas leader Arye Deri.
“Stop
your chutzpah and get your hooves off the Kotel,” Deri said in a
message to the prime minister, using the Hebrew term for the Western
Wall. He called Bennett “the smallest man in Israel.”
But
the focus of the night was Netanyahu, who told Segal and Magal that he
fears for the lives of his wife and children and that in the book he is
writing, he will reveal whether he thinks his decision to release a
record number of murderers from prison in the Gilad Schalit deal was a
mistake.
When
Magal and Segal asked if he would stay in politics, Netanyahu said he
would “do everything necessary to topple the current government.”
While
Netanyahu's critics sneered that he must have been admitting he would
have to quit soon, that was the opposite of how his interviewers on
Channel 14 interpreted it.
They left no doubt that bringing Netanyahu back to power is a central component of their agenda.
Whether
Netanyahu’s own hypothesis about what he needed for a successful
comeback 22 years ago was right will soon be proven by Channel 14.
Gil Hoffman
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/can-israels-new-fox-news-style-channel-bring-netanyahu-back-to-power-analysis-687341
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