The Anti-Netanyahu Studio: When News Is No Longer News But Propaganda

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 publicly understood, including beyond Israel’s internal political bubble.

The deeper problem is not only tone. It is a distortion of priorities. Israel is a country with enormous unresolved civilian challenges. The OECD said in its 2025 survey that Israel has among the highest comparative price levels in the OECD, driven by structural barriers, weak competition in important sectors, and regulation that contributes to high prices for essential goods and services. A fresh study cited this week found Israel’s cost of living has overtaken even some wealthier European countries, with housing and food as major drivers. And while families are already under pressure, supervised dairy prices rose by an average of 1.05% on May 1, 2026, while other dairy products were set for additional hikes, with reports of increases of up to 4.8% on some products. These are not niche concerns. They are the daily life of Israeli households.

And yet, to many viewers, these structural issues often feel secondary in the television hierarchy. The broader national conversation keeps getting pulled back into the same studio-driven political theater: Netanyahu, the coalition, the right, the protests, the legal system, the latest attack line, the latest panel outrage, the latest moral panic. The frustration many feel is not that these subjects are covered at all. It is that they seem to consume the oxygen. The cost of living is real. Food prices are real. Housing costs are real. Regulatory failures are real. But the emotional energy of television news often seems concentrated somewhere else: on turning Netanyahu into the permanent explanation for everything wrong in the country.

That creates a poisonous public culture. A functioning news system should help citizens prioritize. It should distinguish between what is theatrical and what is structural, between the political scrum of the day and the deeper pressures shaping national life. Instead, the impression many Israelis now get is that the mainstream channels are addicted to one specific story because it is emotionally rewarding, politically fashionable, and ratings-friendly: the story of Netanyahu as a national villain. Once that becomes the operating model, news ceases to broaden the public mind. It narrows it.

There is another problem here too, and it is one of professional humility. The people sitting in the studios night after night are free to analyze, critique, and question. But far too often they cross from analysis into theatrical certainty. They speak not like reporters presenting verified facts, but like amateur prime ministers, amateur war cabinets, amateur constitutional engineers, and amateur historians, all at once. They have never sat in the prime minister’s chair. They have never had to weigh intelligence uncertainty, manage global leaders under wartime pressure, navigate coalition instability, hold economic credibility together, and carry responsibility for a Jewish state under permanent threat. That does not mean they must never criticize. It does mean they should show some modesty before turning every editorial instinct into a moral indictment.

And here is where the citizen’s anger becomes understandable. Israelis are constantly told that the media is defending democracy, defending professionalism, defending truth. But what many viewers actually experience is something far more selective. They see an endless appetite for scrutinizing Netanyahu, his coalition, his motives, his style, his language, his political survival, his legal situation, and every person around him. They do not see the same sustained prosecutorial energy directed at the broader ideological ecosystem that opposes him. Never has any of those mainstream news channels said anything against the opposition, the left! For some reason they are untouchable.

That imbalance becomes even more corrosive when it feeds fear. Not a sober warning. Not hard reporting. Fear. The constant suggestion that the country is on the verge of collapse if this coalition remains, that every right-wing initiative is a constitutional emergency, that every national-security move is reckless unless filtered through the preferred studio consensus, that every political disagreement must be narrated as a threat to the state rather than a contest inside a democracy. A media ecosystem that lives off permanent escalation stops informing the public and starts agitating it.

And then comes the final insult: these channels still present themselves as though they are simply the neutral national square. That is what angers many Israelis most. If a broadcaster wants to be a political channel with a clear editorial worldview, fine. Say so. Own it. But do not present yourself as the broad, objective house of Israeli news while devoting disproportionate energy to one political target and one political psychology. A channel that treats almost every major development as another angle on Netanyahu is no longer just a news channel. It is, functionally, a political channel, whether it admits it or not.

This matters because Israel needs serious journalism more than ever. It needs reporting on food prices, competition failures, housing pressures, education standards, infrastructure, health-system strain, productivity, labor-market bottlenecks, local government dysfunction, and the thousands of civilian problems that shape whether ordinary families can actually live here with dignity. Those are not lesser issues. They are the state. They are the country. They are the substance of what citizens experience every month when salaries stay flat and prices rise again. When public discourse keeps being dragged back to the same anti-Netanyahu obsession, the media is not just choosing a villain. It is neglecting the full national agenda.

This is also why the protest contrast feels so jarring to many. On some issues, huge numbers of people are mobilized instantly, roads are blocked, passions explode, and the entire country is told that democracy itself is at stake. But on the cost of living, on the price of food, on market concentration, on the burden crushing working families, the same moral emergency somehow evaporates. That disconnect leaves many Israelis with a dark conclusion: for too much of the political-media class, the real passion is not fixing the country but defeating one man and one camp. Whether or not one agrees fully with that judgment, it is impossible to deny that this is how a large portion of the public now reads the atmosphere. And that mistrust did not appear on its own.

A democracy cannot function well when its biggest broadcasters are seen by millions not as referees, not even as aggressive watchdogs, but as participants in a political war. That is where Israel is drifting. The channels may still have talented reporters and important journalism within them. But the overall perception among much of the national camp is that the editorial center of gravity has shifted from reporting the country to fighting its elected leadership.

That is why the issue is bigger than Netanyahu himself. One day Netanyahu will leave political life. The question will remain: did Israel’s major broadcasters act like institutions serving the public, or like institutions serving a worldview? Did they help citizens see the full country, or did they teach them to see almost everything through the prism of one hated political figure? Did they inform, or did they cultivate a permanent emotional campaign?

If Channels 12, 13, and Kan 11 want public trust, they do not need less criticism of the prime minister. They need more seriousness, more balance of priorities, and more humility about the line between journalism and political activism. Because once the public decides that the news is just another political faction with better lighting, the damage does not stop with one coalition or one election. It eats away at the credibility of the entire democratic conversation.

And that is a cost Israel can no longer afford.