The stars we see every night on the news have taken the place of family – siblings, children and grandchildren – and of friends we can email but never see.
By GLORIA DEUTSCHMan Watching TV(photo credit: INGIMAGE)
For the older “at risk” sector of the population stuck at home, either alone or with a partner, the television has become much more than a box in the corner. It brings us news, features, films and dramas, comedy and escape from the drab existence we have been forced into.The stars we see every night on the news have taken the place of family – siblings, children and grandchildren – and of friends we can email but never see.These television personalities are a colorful lot, and it might be interesting to pick out a few and analyze why we enjoy watching them and hanging onto their every word.Our favorite is Channel 12’s Amit Segal. We call him “The Bar Mitzvah Boy,” although he’s actually 37. He looks impossibly young, with a baby face and even a slight lisp, but is incredibly authoritative about his subject: Israeli politics.If we know more about him than most news people, it is because he was the subject of a searching interview with Ilana Dayan, another brilliant journalist who questioned him about his father, Haggai, among other things.Haggai Segal was caught back in the eighties with like-minded extremists attempting to murder several West Bank mayors, and served time in prison. Most crocheted-kippah-wearing members of the religious community were disgusted by this Jewish terrorist underground.Amit’s first memory of his father was visiting him in prison. Lately he has been accused of bringing his own right-wing sympathies to his reporting but we have always found him objective and conscientious.Aviv Bushinsky is his secular counterpart, and another very professional reporter. He is the son of the late Jay Bushinsky, a veteran who established CNN in Israel and wrote for several prestigious United States papers. He is fair in his reporting and sometimes shares some secret tidbit he acquired as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s media adviser years ago.Yonit Levy is not just gorgeous but absolutely brilliant in her job as anchor and interviewer. She speaks perfect English and Italian, and interviews in both, as well as in Hebrew.She was the journalist assigned to interview Monica Lewinsky. The interview turned into a notorious non-event when Lewinsky walked out after hearing Yonit’s first question, about whether Bill Clinton had ever apologized to her.Although clearly embarrassed, Yonit carried off the whole fiasco with aplomb.Keren Marciano is another very senior reporter who was given the plum job of interviewing Netanyahu a while back.With piercing blue eyes and a school-marmish manner, Marciano is an intimidating interviewer. She famously asked Bibi if he would seek to introduce legislation to avoid being prosecuted, to which he answered “Ma Pitom,” that untranslatable expression which is actually a succinct way of saying “Don’t talk hogwash.”Another reporter we always enjoy seeing is Elad Simhayoff, who is based in London and covers Europe for Channel 12. Tall, good-looking and possessing a fruity voice, he seems to be having the time of his life in London, filmed against Golders Green shopping centers and beautiful Georgian terraces in the UK capital.Moshe Nussbaum is the channel’s crime reporter. He is often out in the field reporting on some underground revenge bombing or other. Nussbaum has baby blue eyes, bushy eyebrows and curly hair which I haven’t yet decided if it is his own or a particularly bad toupee.I always get nachas watching Yair Cherki, a young reporter who wears dangling sidelocks but seems to be very much on the ball; and Branu Tegene, a young Ethiopian journalist based in Jerusalem. Neither man is the sort you would have seen on prime-time TV a decade ago. The morning news reader, Shibel Karmi Mansour, is an Israeli Druze who shows how diverse the channel is.We sit through the news and marvel at the people who bring it to us. If they give a glimmer of hope for the future, we are uplifted. They said it, so it must be true.We are all affected by the news and the way it is presented. Thank heavens we have all these talented people keeping us informed.
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