Law To Protect Journalists Rejected In Israel

Comment: The Knesset rejected the law to protect journalists. Under the law, assault of journalists performing their duties would receive a three to five year prison term. It’s implication was that the duty of journalists was to defend democracy and to be its watchdog.

Answer: The point is that journalists who appear on every TV channel, the Internet, and the press have to be responsible for the education and teaching of society, for its future. They, however, enjoy the fact that they reveal society’s poisonous corruption and illnesses. They don’t do it in order to heal society like doctors do but in order to present these problems in an even more cruel manner than they actually are and show them to the public.

A journalist who presents his harsh perspective stemming from his egoism and wants to show that this is society’s ordinary state, actually raises the standard of what is forbidden, and society follows that and feels “oh yes, this is normal and this is also normal.” We read about such things in the paper or the Internet and begin to accept them because we don’t really know what happens in schools, families, government offices, etc.

Journalists blow everything out of proportions to such an extent that it becomes the norm, and so the next day nothing seems so terrible, which means that the standard has to be raised even higher. There is no education of the people but rather the constant lowering of their level. The level of social sensitivity is getting increasingly lower and people gradually don’t care about anything more.

A journalist today no longer has the image of someone who engages in bringing information to the public, a publicist, and it isn’t a respectable profession like it used to be. A journalist must know his mission and his social role and convey his opinion to society in order to heal it. People don’t know what is happening on the streets. They see everything through the media. If in the past journalists were above the public, now they are inferior to it and so pull all of society to the bottom after them. The point is not whether it is legal to beat journalists or not but the fact that there is no one who can educate them.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/11/16