Role of the media in Israel’s national security psychological crisis - opinion

In a country where nearly every family is connected to the military, where reserve duty interrupts careers, and where conflict periodically disrupts daily life, resilience is not a slogan – it is infrastructure. It is what allows a small, embattled democracy to function in a volatile region.

Yet today, an uncomfortable question must be asked: Is Israeli media, despite its democratic vitality and professional strengths, inadvertently weakening the very resilience that sustains the country?

In conditions of persistent conflict, the media ceases to be merely an information channel. It becomes part of a national security psychology crisis – shaping how citizens emotionally experience threats and crises.

And right now, that experience is often corrosive.

I came to understand this firsthand two decades ago while serving as strategic adviser to then-public security minister Uzi Landau, then minister of public security, at a time when Israel broadened its understanding of internal security challenges in ways similar to the United States after 9/11.

Terror aimed to spread panic far beyond the immediate victims.

To counter this, I developed training programs for police and first responders focused on managing the public psychological environment during and after attacks – rethinking the terror scene from a media coverage perspective. The guiding principle was simple: restore visible law and order quickly. Demonstrate control. Reduce panic. Help society return to normal life as quickly as possible.

I recruited leading members of the Israeli media who participated in simulations alongside police commanders, learning how coverage could either amplify terror or limit its psychological spread.

On February 22, 2004, theory collided with reality.

I was in a taxi on my way to the gym in Jerusalem, several cars ahead of Egged bus No. 14A, when a suicide bomber detonated explosives during morning rush hour near Liberty Bell Park. The explosion threw our taxi forward. As the driver sped away from the blast, I jumped out and ran back toward the scene to help.

The devastation was horrific. But what mattered most to me was how the event would be communicated to millions of Israelis watching at home.

At the scene, I worked with the police and first responders to arrange that local media focus on police and rescue operations – restoring order, assisting victims, demonstrating control – rather than broadcasting graphic images that would magnify fear nationwide. For the foreign media, I suggested we get them focused on the gruesome visuals, while the role of the Israeli coverage was to help signal something critical: the state was functioning, authorities were in control, and society would continue.

In that moment, the media played a direct and responsible role in national resilience and securing Israel’s National Security Psychology.

Two decades later, the environment has grown worse by leaps and bounds. While the advent of new television channels like 14 and 15 has, in many ways, created a better balance for the effects of political leanings in our media coverage, some of the systemic challenges to our national security have gone unaddressed.

Today, nonstop crisis coverage exhausts the public. Israeli viewers live in a perpetual state of breaking news. Studio panels, speculation, and political confrontation dominate airtime. Even routine developments are framed as dramatic turning points. Emotional fatigue replaces solidarity.

National resilience requires psychological recovery breaks, even if they are designed into the news coverage of the day. Instead, coverage often keeps the country in permanent alarm mode.

Polarization is amplified nightly. Television panels resemble political battlegrounds rather than forums for sober analysis. Debate is healthy in a democracy, but when internal conflict becomes the main spectacle, citizens absorb a message of division rather than shared purpose. While this phenomenon is not unique to Israel, as anyone who has watched the international news can attest, it is Israel’s security challenges that make our situation unique and a far greater risk.

Endless repetition of traumatic images compounds the damage. Ongoing reporting becomes psychological overload when replayed continuously, creating despair rather than resilience.

In the movie Network (1976), Sidney Lumet’s biting satire about television, media power, and public outrage, veteran news anchor Howard Beale grabs the attention of his TV audience in a pivotal scene by urging them to literally stand up, go to their windows, and – as an expression of collective frustration and disillusionment with the state of the world and their own helplessness in it – shout in unison, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

That scene feels particularly relevant to Israel’s current media environment because many outlets today mirror the same dynamics Network satirized decades ago: prioritizing outrage-driven content that stokes emotional reaction over sober reporting, chasing ratings over responsibility by amplifying sensationalism, elevating celebrity news personalities whose personas overshadow factual context, and turning news into spectacle rather than journalism.

When journalistic ethics lose out to profit or politically focused motives, societal trust is one of the first casualties.

Trust also erodes when the line between journalism and political messaging blurs.

Only a few months ago, while opening one of Israel’s most trusted news platforms on my phone, I encountered a highly charged political advertisement dominating the screen without clear labeling distinguishing it from editorial content. Only after clicking through, was it clear that this was paid messaging rather than journalism, but it had already influenced how I read and interpreted the news that I consumed after seeing the advertising.

Concerned, I wrote privately to a senior representative of the organization warning that blurring news and advertising risks sacrificing long-term credibility for short-term revenue. The response I received was candid: “You are correct. I will deal with it.”

The incident was resolved, but the lesson remains: when citizens cannot distinguish whether they are seeing journalistic reporting or editorial messaging, trust declines. This collapse of trust is not only in the media, but in the government, in the army, in the courts, and across all the major institutions that are critical to our collective survival. None of this necessarily implies malicious intent.

Democracy requires accountability – but it also requires social cohesion. A society cannot sustain constant internal psychological conflict while facing persistent external threats.

National security is not only about armies and missile defense: it is also about our collective psychology. It is about whether citizens have the trust and belief that their society can endure.

And that belief and trust is reshaped, every day, on the news.