Dan Margalit's Pseudo-journalism
By YISRAEL MEDAD & ELI POLLAK May. 15, 2004

John S. Carroll, editor of The Los Angeles Times, spoke on May 6 to a group
of University of Oregon students.

"The media industry has been infested," he said, "by the rise of
pseudo-journalists who go against journalism's long tradition to serve the
public with accurate information. They view their audience as something to
be manipulated."

Carroll referred to these journalists as a "breed" who mislead while
claiming to inform and who have strayed from the legacy of respect and care
for media consumers. We welcome him, then, to the media scene here in
Israel. Dan Margalit is an elite member of Israel's media. A journalist
since 1960, when he worked at Haolam Hazeh, he was a member of the
editorial board of Haaretz and is currently a commentator for Ma'ariv.

On television, he hosted the Erev Hadash afternoon news program for the
Educational TV Network, was the founding moderator of Popolitika on Channel
1, then moved to Channel 2, taking with him Amnon Dankner and Tommy Lapid;
he went back to Channel 1 and now appears on Channel 10 with Politika Plus.

In the years following the Oslo Accords, Margalit's Popolitika program was
heavily biased in the accord's favor. Nonetheless, he was also moderator of
the famous Netanyahu-Peres debate preceding the 1996 elections, a debate
seen by many as pivotal in the downfall of then prime minister Shimon Peres.

Most recently he was the moderator of the TV Channel 10 Begin-Olmert debate
on the Gaza withdrawal plan.

He earned an MA in Jewish history and penned an autobiography entitled
Those I Have Seen. In his book, Margalit describes how he crossed the line
from journalism to political involvement when he supported Moshe Dayan for
premier.

It was Margalit's revelation of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's secret bank
account in 1976 that led to the collapse of the government - quite a
journalistic feather-in-his-cap.

As reported recently in the Makor Rishon weekly, our colleague Moshe
Kovarsky, a member of Israel's Media Watch's executive, recently researched
Margalit's professionalism and found him wanting. Reviewing his articles in
Ma'ariv over the past four months, Kovarsky found Margalit prophesized
falsely, assumed no responsibility for his failures, moralized, and fudged
the facts.

For example, on January 2, Margalit commented on Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's Herzliya speech: "This whole disengagement plan will turn out to
be nothing more than an insignificant footnote."

On January 23, Margalit wrote in frustration: "In comparison to the regime
Sharon has forged, George Orwell's 1984 seems an innocent republic. He
demanded: "Go, Sharon, for the sake of God go!"

TEN DAYS later, Sharon announced his plan for a unilateral withdrawal from
Gaza and the dismantlement of all Jewish communities in the Strip. On
February 3, Margalit heard the beating wings of history and conveniently
ignored his own demand that Sharon leave office.

He wrote: "One must hope Sharon will pursue this approach he declared in
the Likud Knesset faction." Hello? What happened to 1984?

Another fortnight passed and Margalit was derisive of the Likud's
ideological position. On February 13, he had this to say: "Likud Central
committee members are willing to push and shove to enter the Knesset's
Finance Committee session - their minds are on the economy, not the
integrity of the homeland."

On March 12, he informed us that "the day before yesterday it became known
that Sharon is leaving Ariel outside the separation fence." That quickly
proved wrong.

A week later, on March 19, he addressed Israel's negotiations with the
United States and knew that "Israel has never before conducted such a
disorganized negotiations effort," a statement he would retract a month
later, when he praised Sharon's campaign to obtain presidential approval.

Following the Ahmed Yassin elimination, Margalit saw nothing but dark
clouds ahead. On March 26, he wrote: "A public figure will be murdered or
kidnapped; buildings will collapse in Tel Aviv and Buenos Aires, and planes
will be hijacked and blown up."

So far as we are aware, this has not materialized.

While wary of a mega-terror operation, Margalit was very confident of the
Likud poll outcome. Writing on April 20, he knew that "the Likud's popular
poll has already been decided - not just decided but with a mighty
majority." Waking up to the reality of the impending loss, Margalit, in a
column published two days before the poll, became borderline hysterical: "A
no to disengagement means an internal breakup, a step toward a split in the
kingdom, even to the extent of mass legitimization of army service refusal."

He then informed us that "voting against will bring us apartheid."

Margalit's colored writing makes him eligible for successful nomination as
a member of the Israeli pseudo-journalists' club.

Yisrael Medad and Prof. Eli Pollak are vice- chairman and chairman of
Israel's Media Watch (www.imw.org.il)