Haaretz Writer Fails To Hit Weekly Quota Of ‘Fascist’, ‘McCarthyist’

Measures in case of further violations include the removal of Shakran’s access to articles pre-written by left-wing NGOs.

Tel Aviv, February 3 –  A journalist at Israel’s most prestigious newspaper has been disciplined for not meeting the publisher’s mandated minimum number of times writers must use certain politically charged terms, PreOccupied Territory has learned.

Amos Shakran, a political correspondent for Haaretz, neglected to use the terms “fascist,” “McCarthyism,” “incitement,” and several other key words and phrases enough times to meet the publication’s weekly quota. As such, the reporter has been warned against a recurrence of such neglectful writing, and faces disciplinary action if one takes place.

In daily articles covering Israeli politics, social issues, and societal trends, Shakran failed to include any of those terms at least once every 200 words. While the journalist insists he did use the words with that frequency, editors at Haaretz dismissed at least four such instances as inadmissible, as they appeared quotes from figures on the political right, and thus did not qualify as meaningful.

Shakran’s 800-word article last Tuesday about Minister of Culture Miri Regev’s intention to make government funding for cultural endeavors contingent on the funding recipient refraining from expressing opposition to the existence or Jewish nature of the State of Israel only used the words “fascism” or its variants three times. The following day, a story he wrote on allegedly biased content in a Ministry-of-Education-approved civics textbook entirely omitted the use of “racist,” “incitement against Arabs,” or “incitement against the Left,” despite a golden opportunity to do so in the context of the Rabin assassination.

Potential disciplinary measures in case of further violations include the removal of Shakran’s access to articles pre-written by left-wing NGOs and lobbyists, as well as being barred from networking and social events with representatives of those NGOs and lobbyists. Further journalistic misconduct would result in the reporter demoted to an internship in the culture department, where he would be exposed to a remedial lesson in suffusing one’s work with the proper terminology.

Similar tensions arose in the summer of 2014 in the aftermath of the abduction and murder by Palestinian terrorists of three Israeli teens. Because the kidnapping took place in an area beyond the Green Line marking the 1949 armistice with Jordan, Haaretz editors disciplined a writer for only using the terms “occupied” and “occupation” three times  in a 900-word article. The reporter successfully defended herself during the disciplinary hearing by demonstrating that each of those instances must be counted as two, since their rhetorical impact was augmented by the addition of the words “brutally” or “brutal” before them, respectively.