At the International Journalism Festival in Perugia in April, Panievsky, a veteran reporter on Israeli affairs, warned of troubling trends emerging across the United States, Israel, and Europe.
Authoritarian governments have long relied on legal pressure to suppress criticism and limit public scrutiny. Increasingly, however, critics point to a parallel trend: the rise of media figures and outlets that focus less on informing the public than on challenging the legitimacy of mainstream journalism.
By framing the press as part of a wider liberal establishment—alongside universities, LGBTQ+ groups, and centre-left political parties—they fuel growing public distrust of traditional news organisations.
Some examples she gives are America’s Fox News or Israel’s Channel 14. Nir Hasson put it this way in Haaretz:
Its vanguard is made up of “anti-media media” – individuals and entire systems designed to kill journalism from within. Such are the broadcasters on Channel 14, who look like journalists but whose work is actually the elimination of real journalism. Still, they may be easy to spot. The worst members of the anti-media media disguise themselves as panelists on mainstream channels, as somber commentators on news broadcasts, and as so-called intellectual columnists in newspapers. They are ostensibly journalists, but their goal is not to report the truth and remove screens of concealment. On the contrary, their goal is to obscure the truth and add screens.
One glaring example of this is the Ellison family’s takeover of American networks CBS and CNN as well as the social media network TikTok.
Larry Ellison, the family patriarch, is like Elon Musk, a Big Tech oligarch with a track record of right-wing causes, including support for the Israeli military.
The gutting of CBS News’ flagship show, 60 Minutes, widely regarded as the pinnacle of American television journalism, surprised many.
In particular, right-wing pro-Netanyahu opinion writer Bari Weiss has been brought in by the Ellisons as an ideological enforcer. The firing of the show’s longtime staff, including Scott Pelley, seemed to be a catastrophe for viewers.
Interviewed by the New York Times, Pelley makes it clear that Weiss was trying to tip the scales of the coverage toward the Trump Administration, specifically on the topic of mass mobilisation against martial anti-immigrant round-ups in Minneapolis.
But in her talk, Panievsky insinuates that traditional media, while vital for any democracy, haven’t taken the threat of anti-media media seriously enough. The Pelley interview might be proof that they’re asleep at the wheel.
For one thing, Scott Pelley doesn’t appreciate that Weiss isn’t just a journalist with conservative ideas, but rather a crusader against liberal thought and free speech.
He called for her removal at CBS but blamed Weiss’ inexperience rather than her agenda.
“Look, she’s a lovely person. And her Free Press organization that she founded has been very successful. But television’s not her thing,” he told the Times.
Why make excuses for her? Weiss is not a lovely person, by any stretch of the imagination. That’s exactly why she was hired to take over CBS.
Tellingly, Pelley dug an even bigger hole for himself by adding that “the bigger problem…is not any kind of political influence,” but rather “the incompetence”.
We cannot over-emphasise how much political pressure there is to bury journalism that questions corporate greed, militarism, inequality and government heavy-handedness.
At major news organisations like CBS, incompetence in day-to-day management is a weapon to achieve that aim.
To understand what’s going on here, journalists in the US right now don’t fear that the Ellisons will turn CBS and CNN into a new kind of Fox News, a Murdoch-owned right-wing outrage machine.
Rather, the fear is that they will deliberately tank these important networks, narrowing the range of news coverage for the American consumer.
Yes, there will be some kind of product, but it will be banal, uninquisitive and deferential to power.
Think feel-good stories about heroic animal shelters rather than investigations into government corruption or the evisceration of human rights.
Will this be successful monetarily? No. But it doesn’t matter. The Ellisons don’t need the money.
And if this can happen in the US, where free speech is a constitutional bedrock, then the rest of the world is under threat, too. The more optimistic observer might say that this is a fight over old territory.
Only the ageing consume their news from television, as the Internet has opened up new spaces of podcasts, websites (like the one you’re reading right now), videos and newsletters.
I raised this point during a panel hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Free Expression last year. While these platforms have created important opportunities for individual journalists and a wider range of viewpoints, they cannot substitute for the collective resources, expertise, and credibility that strong news institutions bring to the public sphere.
The whole, in other words, is greater than the sum of its parts.
Programs like 60 Minutes have the resources to place reporters on the ground in conflict zones and other high-risk environments, allowing them to gather first-hand information. They also help sustain journalism as a long-term profession and craft, rather than a freelance pursuit accessible mainly to those who can afford to work without stable pay.
That is the apparatus under attack by the Ellisons and the anti-media media Panievsky warns us about.
Free, robust, well-funded media are essential to democracy. We need a pro-media media.
Photograph courtesy of Presia Debauch. Published under a Creative Commons license.
