Cohen-Eliya: Left channels face reckoning after election

Prof. Moshe Cohen-Eliya responded Wednesday to reports that political analyst Amit Segal is in talks with Channel 13 about joining the network.

"There are reports of contacts between Asaf Rappaport and Amit Segal. One of Segal's conditions for coming to Channel 13 is to dilute the influence of Raviv Drucker on the channel," Cohen-Eliya said.

"Channel 13 is a very strange mutation in the media world. The journalists there have become accustomed to running the channel. Chodorov and his colleagues brought Rappaport in to prevent Patrick Drahi, a right-winger, from taking control. But Rappaport came to do business and good television, and he understands very well that the Israeli public has moved rightward, especially after October 7. Drucker and Chodorov may discover that the price of bringing in Rappaport is their own heads."

Cohen-Eliya noted that in an interview with Kobi Meidan, Rappaport praised Yinon Magal as a charismatic and impressive television figure, and did not rule out bringing "The Patriots - Next Generation" to the channel. "It's interesting what Kara, Drucker, and Glickman think about these thoughts of their boss," he said.

The professor added: "The coming elections are very important for the media arena. Because if indeed, as it appears, the right wins again, then the left-wing channels will need to make very painful adjustments in their agenda."

"Because over time it will not be possible to maintain such an extreme gap between public opinion and the opinion of the journalists on these channels. And if they want to recover, serious adjustments, not just band-aids in the form of a late-night show by 'the values-based right' (Avri and Sherki), are required. And yes, the endless manipulations that Yitzhak Amit does to preserve the old media hegemony also cannot really hold over time."

"Because the times are right-wing."