Live fact-checking comes to Israeli TV

Dec 7, 2020

In a preliminary vote, the Israeli Knesset passed a motion to dissolve itself by 61 to 54 Dec. 2. Lawmakers from the Blue and White Party headed by Benny Gantz supported the motion, which will now move to the Knesset committee for debate this week before a first reading.

Following the vote, the prime minister scheduled a prime-time press conference in which he accused his partners in the government, Gantz and the rest of the Blue and White, of violating the coalition agreement in dissolving the Knesset. Though everything about the content and timing was business as usual for Benjamin Netanyahu, the media outlets did something unheard of: they fact-checked Netanyahu’s speech and respond to inaccuracies in real time. News 13 ran a graphic comparing the prime minister’s claims and the facts.

In two columns, News 13 compared “what was said” against the “facts.” Where Netanyahu claimed that Blue and White is violating the coalition agreement, the station posted under “facts,” “The Likud violated paragraph 30 of the coalition agreement that determined that a two-year budget would be passed.”

News 12 went further. Presenter Keren Marciano corrected the inaccuracies in Netanyahu’s speech while he gave it. As Netanyahu spoke about battling the pandemic, he offered a list of countries he said were similar in population to Israel and claimed they suffer higher infection rates. The station was quick to note other countries with similarly sized populations Netanyahu did not mention: Greece, Serbia, Slovakia, Lebanon and Denmark, which are all faring better than Israel.

The presenter commented on Netanyahu’s claim that “the Blue and White made populist demands to open up business sooner” that the prime minister also faced off against Finance Minister Israel Katz and Education Minister Yoav Galant, both of the Likud, over the issue.

Fact-checking has already been practiced for a while in Israel’s print media. Newspaper Yedioth Ahronot analyzes Netanyahu’s speeches the next day. Globes has a daily column called “The Whistle” that checks politicians’ statements. The daily Israeli Broadcast Corporation program “On the Other Hand with Guy Zohar” does the same.

But live fact-checking is unprecedented in Israel. Was this a one-time occurrence or have the news networks decided to start clarifying the facts for viewers amid politicians’ unending streams of inaccurate statements? 

Raviv Drucker, the senior analyst at news 13, explained to Al-Monitor, “It’s not our idea; we’ve seen it on foreign networks for a long time. I and others have considered the idea at the network for a year and our instinct was not to do such things. But in the end, we decided that special circumstances require special steps, and the special circumstances are that there has never been in the history of television in Israel a situation where the prime minister, dozens of times over the past year, just takes over the news on a regular basis.”

Drucker explained that Netanyahu intentionally schedules press conferences during prime time. Each time, he holds a 30 to 40-minute press conference, to which he is often late, and so the entire news broadcast is wasted waiting for him. By the time he finishes and takes questions, the news hour is over. “We had always conducted our fact-checking once the speaker stopped speaking, when we would return to the analyst or the correspondent in the studio.”

Drucker said, “To come after the whole thing and say that at this minute or another the premier said something false doesn’t have an impact on viewers. So the sense was that we had to do it during the speech in real time. … We chose to put a spotlight on what seemed most essential. A person violated the most significant point in the coalition agreement. That is, getting to head the government for a first period in exchange to stepping down and rotating later on. This person violated this clause crassly while claiming that the other side is the one breaking up the agreement.” 

Will the news networks fact-check other politicians? According to Drucker, “This will apply to everyone. When Benny Gantz or [opposition leader] Yair Lapid, for instance, have press conferences we’ll do the same. In the end, there’s a CEO and an editor of the newscast who decides, not just me. But as far as I know, we’ll continue fact-checking and we’ll apply it to everyone.” 

During the US election, journalists and news corporations confronted politicians about the falsehoods in their statements and even cut off live broadcasts in which falsehoods were said. While Israeli journalists have long clarified the facts for viewers, doing so live is altogether new. Now that the precedent has been made, will it affect how Israeli politicians express themselves?