When News Stops Being News and Becomes a Permanent Anti-Netanyahu Studio Israel’s major broadcasters still call themselves news channels. But to many Israelis, they no longer look like broad national news outlets. They look like round-the-clock political operations centered on one obsession: Benjamin Netanyahu and the government he leads.

There is nothing wrong with criticizing a prime minister. In a democracy, criticism is not only legitimate, it is necessary. Benjamin Netanyahu is not above scrutiny, and neither is any coalition. But that is not the real issue in Israel today. The real issue is that for a great many Israelis, Channels 12, 13, and Kan 11 no longer feel like institutions that report the news. They feel like institutions that filter the country through one narrow lens: how to frame Netanyahu, the right, and the national camp as a permanent problem. That distinction matters. Journalism is supposed to investigate power. It is not supposed to become emotionally invested in proving, day after day, that one side of the political map is uniquely illegitimate.

To many viewers, that is exactly what has happened. The sense is not merely that Netanyahu gets criticized. It is that he is treated as the gravitational center of everything. Security story? Netanyahu. Coalition dispute? Netanyahu. Judicial fight? Netanyahu. Diplomacy? Netanyahu. Protest movement? Netanyahu. Even when the subject is nominally something else, the frame always seems to bend back toward the same conclusion: that the country’s central story is Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure, Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat, Benjamin Netanyahu’s guilt, or Benjamin Netanyahu’s supposed political pathology. Channel 12 and other mainstream broadcasters are downplaying a wartime statement by the prime minister and preferring an editorial agenda over presenting the public with the government’s case in full. That is obviously a partisan critique, but it captures a sentiment shared by many. The story is too often selected, edited, and emotionally colored before the viewer ever gets a chance to judge it independently.

This is not only a fantasy. External reporting has also described at least part of the Israeli television landscape in similar terms. Reuters and the Guardian and many other coverage around media ownership battles have referred to Channel 13 as known for its critical coverage of Netanyahu and his government. That does not prove every report is biased, and it does not mean criticism is illegitimate. But it does show that the perception of a structural editorial posture against Netanyahu is not invented out of thin air. It is part of how the channel is........

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