Media Demand Triple Wages For Serving As Judge, Jury, Executioner

“We are performing three valuable roles, and should therefore receive three times the payment.”

Tel Aviv, September 1 – Israeli and foreign journalists issued coordinated statements today asserting that their constant performance of the duties of judge, jury, and executioner regarding political and military figures requires that they be compensated commensurate with their fulfillment of those three arduous roles.

The Israel Press Club, the Foreign Press Association, and the Foreign Press Club all put out releases this morning calling for greater remuneration of media personalities working hard to take reports of crimes or violations and to use their industry’s influence to ensure that the public remains predisposed to assume the worst about the suspects and therefore treats them with the disdain, hate, and abuse they have been led to believe the accused deserves.

“We are performing three valuable roles, and should therefore receive three times the payment,” read the statements. “Our training, experience, and attitudes must be recognized in monetary terms, not only in terms of preordaining that our prejudices are manifest in society through our reporting and commentary.”

The statements highlighted the valuable threefold role the press fills by citing the recent case of a soldier accused of killing a wounded, prone terrorist. Elor Azaria, a soldier in Hebron, stands accused of killing a wounded terrorist who had already been shot and lay on the ground after attempting to stab them. In the initial coverage of the episode, the media at large gave air time and attention only to the partial and tendentious clips that support the accusation that Azaria’s actions were unnecessary and murderous, while all but ignoring testimony and video evidence of ongoing concern that the wounded terrorist was wearing an explosive vest and thus continued to pose a danger to the assembled personnel.

“No one else consistently and continuously hammers away at the defendant’s presumed guilt the way we do,” the statement read. “It is the press that determines how the masses see the trial’s conduct, how the evidence is portrayed, and what the verdict should be, regardless of what’s actually happening in the courtroom, and those efforts deserve compensation in keeping with their threefold intensity.”

Not all journalists support the demand. “It’s dishonest to demand that much in exchange for doing what we do anyway,” explained Amos Schocken, publisher of Haaretz. “It’s not really ‘additional’ work in the way the reporters and commentators would have us believe. The fact is Israel doesn’t use a jury system, so the people doing this work shouldn’t be asking for anything more than double.”