Social scientists have for years examined the coverage of the “extraordinary” from the vantage point of gatekeeping theory. Such theory presumably explains why and how editors and reporters decide what goes into a newspaper or on a news programme, not just during ordinary day-to-day happenings, but during catastrophic events. Academics, usually safely behind university walls, calmly apply levels-of-analysis theories. These theories probe decision-making on the decision-makers' personal level (looking at their values, personalities, politics, ethnicity, gender, and so on), on the organizational level (looking at corporate culture and values to see the influences at play), and within the framework of individual roles involving how reporters, editors, news directors, camera persons, etc., see their functions in relation to societal expectations.

However, to those actually working in the “news business,” much of this analytical effort misses the point. According to journalism professor Robert Greene, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a former managing editor of the respected Long Island (New York) newspaper Newsday, there is a huge gap in understanding between what real journalists do and what academics think they do or should do. Professor Greene, currently chair of the department of journalism & mass media studies at Hofstra University, remarked that even now, in his role as a journalism professor, he finds the gap troublesome: “I teach students how to investigate a story, how to write, and to understand that the ‘mission' of a reporter is to convey truthful information. Many of my colleagues in the media studies and communications area merely teach their students how to throw rocks at the press.”

Here in Israel coverage of the current wave of terrorist acts, dating back to September 2000, has added a new and challenging dimension to both those who report the news and those who analyse the newsgathering process and product. Using a random method of content analysis, pick up any Israeli newspaper on almost any day (there is almost always some kind of terrorist attack committed somewhere in the country) and have a look. For example, after a particularly devastating attack Yedioth Aharonoth (Latest News) used a banner, Yamim Shkhorim (Black Days), which was repeated on several inside pages of this tabloid-format newspaper. The banner quickly and quietly conveys the meaning of their lengthy articles and “screeching” photos. Below the banner, on one of the pages, was a blood-red box with Yamim shel Dma'ot (Days of Tears), printed in white. Surrounding the box were half-a-dozen pictures of tearful people agonising over their lost loved ones. On another page, photos taken during normally busy hours in a popular shopping mall and restaurant located in the heart of Jerusalem illustrate the meaning of the words Raik beYerushalayim (Emptiness in Jerusalem).

Frightened

The defining theme for the next two facing pages was Yamim shel Da'aga (Days of Worry). There, in brief, boxed articles one could read about the psychological toll of terrorism: there had been a marked increase in the number of phone calls to the national health services seeking advice on how to cope and in the use of medications such as tranquillizers and anti-depressants. One could also find some advice: speak to your children, answer their questions simply, try not to frighten them, take a vacation, etc.

When photos and information about suicide bombers are available, they are reported. Israeli political factions (from the extreme left to the extreme right) are interviewed and their diverse opinions are published. Depending on the severity of the attack, there may even be a show of unity in their condemnation of terrorism, if not on the direction policy should take. There are also articles on the economic impact which indicate that there has been a drastic fall in the use of public buses and in the number of shoppers who frequent shopping malls, to say nothing of the lost billions of tourist dollars.

Some academics have written about the reporter's “normal” penchant for exaggeration, but in this case there is no need to sensationalise the already sensational, or to hype the already unbelievable level of carnage. Israeli newspapers sell out because they provide something the broadcasters do not: when you buy a newspaper, you have a chance to read about the victims, their lives, and their now never-to-be fulfilled aspirations. You can look at their photos, up close, over and over again. These people, whom you never knew and never will know, in their deaths, become lost members of your family. And so momentarily, at least, the Israeli press unites the nation's political factions in tribal mourning.

Impatience

Prof. George Gerbner has written that they engage in agenda-setting, telling us if not what to think, then what to think about. Here in Israel people do not need the print or broadcast media to tell them what to think about. Terrorism is at the top of everyone's “thinking agenda” and not because of media coverage. Rather, because of the small size of the country, everyone knows someone who either directly experienced an attack, or who knows someone who did. As was true in the United States, in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, we are all in the same boat, except that here it has been this way for a long, long time.

Prof. Gerbner is also known for his “Mean World Syndrome,” which noted that heavy consumers of media products (such as the outputs of a reporter), and particularly heavy viewers of TV and cable shows (or news reports) that focus on crime or terrorism, tend to develop an obsessive fear of victimization. Sadly, as freelance writer and journalist Paula R. Stern points out, “Israel's pre-history and history have led to such an understandable preoccupation.” The fact that Israeli bus drivers always turn up the volume on their radios, so that passengers can listen to the half-hourly and hourly news reports, has everything to do with Israel's real mean-world syndrome and nothing to do with media portrayals of crime. All through the history of Israel, its citizenry has been trained to report immediately any packages, or bags left unattended. Everyone knows and fears that it may be a bomb. Recently two dark-skinned young men jumped out of the car they had parked near a bus stop across the street from the central bus station in Petach Tikva and left their car engine running. People waiting in line began to move as far away as they could, fearing a car bomb. The two men returned quickly; they had simply run into a nearby shop to pick up something. Despite their relief that the men returned to the car, everyone shouted angrily at them. As someone said: “This time it was all right.” In other words, the Israeli case study shows that it is not the media, but the reality of life that creates the people's attitudes, fears, and behaviour patterns.

Laboratory

But, for Israeli journalists, who live with extraordinary events on an almost daily basis, the original Lasswell functions are far more meaningful. Think about the term “surveillance” in the context of the Gulf War. Under tremendous pressure from the United States, Israel showed restraint by not launching a retaliatory strike against Iraq for the unprovoked Scud attacks against Israeli cities. During that tense period, Galei Zahal (Israel Army Radio) initiated “quiet” radio, enabling the population to sleep at night and to rest on the Sabbath. People could tune their radios to this silent station, knowing that if anything was about to happen the silence would quickly be replaced by a warning broadcast, followed by the sound of the siren. Lasswell's correlation function also disappeared, as with palimpsest, written over by those who tried to say it better. Yet, correlation is illustrated in the description above of Yedioth Aharonoth, and it is also found in other Israeli newspapers, for example Maariv, Israel's afternoon broad-sheet newspaper. An issue published two days after the Passover Massacre devoted almost the entire 16 pages of the first section to articles and pictures relating to the attack, which killed 20 people (with the death toll later reaching 28) and injured 152 of whom 48 were seriously hurt.

Blood

Paula R. Stern provided her rationale for the nature of the photos and content: “The attack on the first night of Passover, an important Jewish holiday, speaks volumes about the intent of the terrorists to kill Jews, to destroy them, their religion, and the State of Israel. It also speaks volumes about us. The terrorists exploit our fear of annihilation and our hesitancy to call this intent to murder Jews “anti-Semitism,” both remnants of the Holocaust. For them, this is a Jihad, a holy war against the Jewish infidels. They want it all, and they want Israel destroyed. The press also caught the symbolism of the Passover massacre and that became their focus.”

After a particularly bad double attack by suicide bombers, who blew themselves up in buses in Haifa and Hadera, students at Haifa University set up tables in the lobbies and provided memorial candles for those who wished to light them. A German student took exception to the morbid and obsessive nature of newspaper coverage. “I think there is too much coverage of these incidents,” she said. “It only upsets people. Look at all those students lighting candles; they are already upset. Why do the newspapers always have to show the pictures of the dead and tell their stories? What good does that do?” An Israeli student tried to explain that it is a way of honouring those who have been killed. But the German student remained unconvinced, “The way the press covers these things only stirs people's anger and pressures the Government to retaliate, and that doesn't help.” Obviously she still believed the long-ago discredited Stimulus-Response Theory, renamed several times by several different academics: It has been labeled the Maximum-Effects Theory, the Silver Bullet Theory, and the Hypodermic Needle Theory. They all point to the belief that the media (including the diligent journalist searching for the truth) are so powerfully influential that they merely release their messages (the stimulus, bullet, hypodermic needle), and the masses believe and accept whatever is said.

Media theories come and go, and academics will forever be trying to understand the relationship between the press and society and the press and government. Here in Israel, it all seems much less complex. The reporters rush to the scenes of disasters, find out what happened, ask many questions and tell us what they learned. They do this every day, even on the worst days when many of us are afraid to walk about. We buy their newspapers and listen to their news reports on radio and television. We talk to each other and are frightened by what is happening, but we all get up each morning and go to work. Those of us who teach the various media theories to young Israeli students (almost all of whom have served in the military and are still called up for reserve duty) recognise that here in Israel there is a different reality than almost anywhere else in the world. Elsewhere, people can talk about mediated reality and reality. Here, mediated reality is the reality, and sometimes we wish it weren't.