When journalism fails, democracy fails - opinion

Imagine a family gathered outside an emergency room, anxiously awaiting news of a loved one undergoing lifesaving surgery. Will he survive? Was the operation successful? What decisions might still be required?

The surgeon emerges, only to discover that the entire family is drunk. In an attempt to manage their anxiety, they have shared a bottle of hard liquor. He approaches the eldest family member, seeking authorization for an urgent medical decision, but quickly realizes that nobody is capable of exercising sound judgment.

The patient is fighting for his life. Those entrusted with helping determine his future have incapacitated themselves.

Now imagine that the patient is Israel.

A country confronting extraordinary security, diplomatic, economic, and societal challenges requires an electorate capable of exercising critical judgment. But what happens when the very institutions responsible for informing that electorate increasingly substitute competing narratives for verified information?

What happens when we no longer know what to believe?

An epidemic without a vaccine

During COVID-19, Israel confronted an identifiable threat: a virus. People responded differently. Some vaccinated, others isolated, while many adopted combinations of preventive measures.

Today, we face another contagion: the erosion of our collective capacity for critical thinking.

Its symptoms include ideological tribalism, confirmation bias, selective reporting, sensationalism, and the increasingly blurred distinction between journalism and advocacy.

Unlike COVID-19, however, there is no convenient inoculation. Nor can we simply isolate ourselves from the information environment without surrendering our ability to participate meaningfully in democratic life.

Or can we?

During a recent visit to my brother-in-law’s sukkah, I encountered an unexpected perspective.

He is an ultra-Orthodox rabbi living a modest life in the Tel Aviv area. He has no television, radio, smartphone, or meaningful connection to the daily news cycle. When I asked why, he explained that he had no desire to contaminate his life with the hatred, accusations, and incessant disparagement dominating public discourse.

But how, I asked, could he make an informed electoral choice? His response was striking: Why should he dirty himself merely for the privilege of selecting a voting slip and placing it in a ballot box, when I am being briefed by those who do not value truth?

Initially, I found his position troubling.

Then I asked myself an uncomfortable question: Having consumed countless hours of news, commentary, analysis, and competing revelations, do I actually know substantially more about what is truly happening than he does? I was not entirely certain.

He has chosen isolation. I have chosen immersion. Yet neither approach necessarily guarantees an informed understanding of reality.

That is a frightening proposition for a democracy.

When everything is true and false

Another encounter brought the problem into sharper focus.

Haim, a politically right-wing acquaintance from my neighborhood, who is originally from America, frequently approaches me after morning prayers with philosophical questions.

Recently, he asked whether the new allegations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received advance warnings concerning the October 7 Hamas attack were true.

My answer surprised him. “They are 100% true and 100% false.”

I was not suggesting that mutually contradictory factual claims can both be correct. Rather, I was describing the predicament of the ordinary Israeli citizen.

Depending on which television channel, commentator, or newspaper one follows, the same allegations can emerge as established truth, malicious fabrication, selective disclosure, or politically motivated manipulation.

What was actually communicated? To whom? When? What evidence exists? What was understood at the time, rather than reconstructed afterward?

These are legitimate journalistic questions. They deserve documented answers. Instead, audiences are frequently invited to select their preferred reality.

The same challenge arises in reporting on the Qatar-related investigations, Netanyahu’s corruption trial, and the Sde Teiman affair. Allegations, evidence, prosecutorial decisions, contested interpretations, and judicial findings are distinct categories.

Yet in the public arena, these distinctions too often disappear beneath dramatic headlines and ideological certainty.

An accusation is not a conviction. Equally, the absence of a conviction does not establish that an allegation was fabricated.

Responsible journalism must preserve both principles.

Our media’s lack of a mutually assured destruction doctrine

Consider the increasingly adversarial relationship between Channels 12 and 14.

Both reach substantial Israeli audiences. Both have become associated with sharply contrasting political perspectives. Their competition reflects, and arguably reinforces, the divisions running through Israeli society.

The analogy that comes to mind is the Cold War nuclear arms race. The United States and Soviet Union eventually understood the logic of mutually assured destruction: Escalation without restraint could destroy both adversaries.

Israel’s competing media camps appear to lack an equivalent appreciation of the consequences of escalating their information warfare. Each side can become increasingly preoccupied with exposing the other’s failures, defending its preferred political actors and reinforcing the convictions of its audience.

But when the public concludes that journalism itself has become another political battlefield, the resulting damage extends far beyond either channel. The casualty is public capability for critical thinking.

This is not an argument for political neutrality in commentary. Journalists are entitled to opinions. Media organizations are entitled to editorial perspectives. But reporting and advocacy are different professional disciplines.

A journalist’s responsibility is not to establish that his preferred political narrative is correct. It is to establish what the available evidence supports, including when that evidence contradicts his own convictions.

The professional standards problem

The Worlds of Journalism Study, 2021-2023, whose Israeli research was conducted before October 7, 2023, provides an important insight.

Among the Israeli journalists surveyed, 57.7% supported applying professional ethical standards regardless of circumstances, while 60.7% considered departures from professional standards potentially justifiable in extraordinary situations.

These findings do not establish that Israeli journalists are less ethical than their Western counterparts. They do, however, illustrate the importance of examining how professional principles are interpreted and implemented.

Israel already possesses a comprehensive Press Council ethics code. It requires verification, accuracy, transparent identification of opinion, and appropriate correction of substantive errors. Publication urgency does not excuse inadequate verification.

Our problem, therefore, is not simply the absence of professional guidelines. It is whether those guidelines carry sufficient enforcement when political passions, competitive pressures, and commercial incentives collide.

Who guards the guardians?

Journalism is often described as democracy’s watchdog. But who holds the watchdog accountable when it confuses suspicion with proof, interpretation with fact, or a political objective with the public interest?

Israel needs a renewed commitment to independent professional accountability.

Major news organizations should publish transparent corrections, distinguish reporting from commentary, disclose relevant conflicts of interest, and explain their standards for relying on anonymous sources.

Independent professional audits should examine factual accuracy, source verification, correction practices, and editorial transparency across the political spectrum. Not to silence journalists. Quite the opposite.

A free press is indispensable. But press freedom without professional responsibility cannot adequately serve an informed electorate. Nor should government become the arbiter of acceptable journalism. That would replace one danger with another.

The responsibility must begin within the profession itself.

The real inoculation

I initially considered calling our contagion the woke virus. But that label risks reducing a much broader societal problem to yet another ideological argument.

The deeper infection is intellectual tribalism: the willingness to accept almost anything that validates our existing beliefs while dismissing almost anything that challenges them.

It afflicts the Right and the Left alike.

Its antidote is not censorship, withdrawal, or enforced consensus. It is the restoration of critical thinking, professional journalism, and the discipline to distinguish what we know from what we believe.

Israel cannot afford an electorate permanently intoxicated by competing versions of reality. We are confronting decisions affecting our security, democratic institutions, international standing, and national future.

This coming October 27, the surgeon will be standing outside the emergency room. The decisions cannot wait. The question is whether we are sufficiently informed and sober enough to make them.

The writer is a global strategist and a strategic adviser at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. Follow him on X: @jeffkahn2020