Uri Tzvi Greenberg - Media Critic
URI TZVI GREENBERG'S MEDIA CRITICISM
BY
YISRAEL MEDAD AND ELI POLLAK
Criticism of the media here in Israel, we readily admit, is not a recent development. On the other hand, we have discovered that it isn't that recent either.
Almost 80 years ago, an article appeared in a literary-political journal authored by the poet Uri Tzvi Greenberg savaging the Hebrew press. Reviewing it, we found that it could be considered as a classic, as parts of it remain relevant even today.
Greenberg, a Yiddish expressionist poet of renown, son of a Chassidic Rebbe, made Aliyah in December 1923. His output includes thousands of poems and articles in Hebrew - Mossad Bialik has so far published fifteen volumes of his collected works. Within a year of his arrival, he had founded a literary journal named Sadan (The Anvil). In its issue of Kislev 5685, (December 1924), a polemic appeared.
Entitled "A Perfidious Press", Greenberg, who later was awarded the Bialik Prize three times as well as the Israel Prize for Literature, reacted to press standards in Mandate Palestine, its political orientation as well as ideological content. The horror Greenberg expresses is based on the Jerusalem riots of April 1920 and November 1921 and the Jaffa riots of May 1921 when innocent civilians were targeted by Arabs.
But let Greenberg talk:
"Throughout the world, there is no press comparable to ours. Everywhere else, the press enlightens every incident. It clarifies. It emotes the senses. It obliges one to think. It is combative. Because the press is the public voice, it makes demands of the common people even at a time when all are busy with their mundane affairs.
In contrast, our press is disloyal to the people and weakens the mind. It puts to sleep the will to live and, ever so slowly, quashes the desire to know the state of the people and mankind. It blocks the path of opposition in advance. It has conditioned us to stop thinking, to say there is no danger and this, at a time when the abyss is at our feet.
Our press has learned to believe that there really is a superior wisdom in its own political reporting; that in its quietude there truly is a strategic comprehension, at the very time when the nation should raise an outcry. So much so that one may already believe that even the dead of the pogroms in Jerusalem and Jaffa aren't really dead - but living.
The press in Eretz-Yisrael is not the mouthpiece of a tattered society on some cursed little island. Instead of expressing our terrible suffering, it educates daily to perpetual idiocy, to spiritual degeneration, to non-elevation even on the Shabbat.
It has learnt to play down, denigrate and make fun of every important event that really calls for deep introspection. * Our intellect has had a sentence of elimination pronounced on it. Where are our intellectuals if but a bunch of fools? The editors are members of the various (Jewish Agency and Histadruth) 'executive councils'. They are geniuses and you - nothing. We have to await whatever they write and say. And even if our raw flesh is cut, we need to wait for them to tell us when to shout: Oiy!
The press in Eretz-Yisrael has become the mouthpiece of the official Zionist diplomacy, whose irrational trust in the world's support has caused many a downfall until we have reached despair. It too, has helped hang the vibrant messianic Judaism, crucified, on the nail of smug British reasoning.
Certainly, the Arab press is on a higher level. It labors and is victorious in its unsophisticated and undiplomatic writing. * Our editorials, are disgusting in their cleverness and intelligence, coming instead of hot lead. The editorial writers carry on with a pale smile, careful lest they be unbalanced, as if fearing to add a feather to the scales, at a time when they should be deeply penetrating.
We are in declining . All our 'wise men' cannot now help, even as they travel to Rome. They should go to hell and stop standing oppressively on the shoulders of a poor nation. The few of us that yet have what to say, who have salvaged one small iota of independent opinion from the lake of still-standing waters, surely are pained.
They already know beforehand that if they speak out, they will be ridiculed. They know that even if there is no kingdom in Jerusalem and no Temple on the Mount that, as in that ancient time, even then they made fun of prophets and the force of spirit and those who search out God.
Our media can be compared to Arab butter and to those liquids which reflect nothing at all."
Greenberg's words, should be required text for all serious students of journalism.
Yisrael Medad and Prof. Eli Pollak are, respectively, Vice Chairman and Chairman of Israel's Media Watch (www.imw.org.il).
BY
YISRAEL MEDAD AND ELI POLLAK
Criticism of the media here in Israel, we readily admit, is not a recent development. On the other hand, we have discovered that it isn't that recent either.
Almost 80 years ago, an article appeared in a literary-political journal authored by the poet Uri Tzvi Greenberg savaging the Hebrew press. Reviewing it, we found that it could be considered as a classic, as parts of it remain relevant even today.
Greenberg, a Yiddish expressionist poet of renown, son of a Chassidic Rebbe, made Aliyah in December 1923. His output includes thousands of poems and articles in Hebrew - Mossad Bialik has so far published fifteen volumes of his collected works. Within a year of his arrival, he had founded a literary journal named Sadan (The Anvil). In its issue of Kislev 5685, (December 1924), a polemic appeared.
Entitled "A Perfidious Press", Greenberg, who later was awarded the Bialik Prize three times as well as the Israel Prize for Literature, reacted to press standards in Mandate Palestine, its political orientation as well as ideological content. The horror Greenberg expresses is based on the Jerusalem riots of April 1920 and November 1921 and the Jaffa riots of May 1921 when innocent civilians were targeted by Arabs.
But let Greenberg talk:
"Throughout the world, there is no press comparable to ours. Everywhere else, the press enlightens every incident. It clarifies. It emotes the senses. It obliges one to think. It is combative. Because the press is the public voice, it makes demands of the common people even at a time when all are busy with their mundane affairs.
In contrast, our press is disloyal to the people and weakens the mind. It puts to sleep the will to live and, ever so slowly, quashes the desire to know the state of the people and mankind. It blocks the path of opposition in advance. It has conditioned us to stop thinking, to say there is no danger and this, at a time when the abyss is at our feet.
Our press has learned to believe that there really is a superior wisdom in its own political reporting; that in its quietude there truly is a strategic comprehension, at the very time when the nation should raise an outcry. So much so that one may already believe that even the dead of the pogroms in Jerusalem and Jaffa aren't really dead - but living.
The press in Eretz-Yisrael is not the mouthpiece of a tattered society on some cursed little island. Instead of expressing our terrible suffering, it educates daily to perpetual idiocy, to spiritual degeneration, to non-elevation even on the Shabbat.
It has learnt to play down, denigrate and make fun of every important event that really calls for deep introspection. * Our intellect has had a sentence of elimination pronounced on it. Where are our intellectuals if but a bunch of fools? The editors are members of the various (Jewish Agency and Histadruth) 'executive councils'. They are geniuses and you - nothing. We have to await whatever they write and say. And even if our raw flesh is cut, we need to wait for them to tell us when to shout: Oiy!
The press in Eretz-Yisrael has become the mouthpiece of the official Zionist diplomacy, whose irrational trust in the world's support has caused many a downfall until we have reached despair. It too, has helped hang the vibrant messianic Judaism, crucified, on the nail of smug British reasoning.
Certainly, the Arab press is on a higher level. It labors and is victorious in its unsophisticated and undiplomatic writing. * Our editorials, are disgusting in their cleverness and intelligence, coming instead of hot lead. The editorial writers carry on with a pale smile, careful lest they be unbalanced, as if fearing to add a feather to the scales, at a time when they should be deeply penetrating.
We are in declining . All our 'wise men' cannot now help, even as they travel to Rome. They should go to hell and stop standing oppressively on the shoulders of a poor nation. The few of us that yet have what to say, who have salvaged one small iota of independent opinion from the lake of still-standing waters, surely are pained.
They already know beforehand that if they speak out, they will be ridiculed. They know that even if there is no kingdom in Jerusalem and no Temple on the Mount that, as in that ancient time, even then they made fun of prophets and the force of spirit and those who search out God.
Our media can be compared to Arab butter and to those liquids which reflect nothing at all."
Greenberg's words, should be required text for all serious students of journalism.
Yisrael Medad and Prof. Eli Pollak are, respectively, Vice Chairman and Chairman of Israel's Media Watch (www.imw.org.il).
0 תגובות:
הוסף רשומת תגובה
הירשם תגובות לפרסום [Atom]
<< דף הבית