Oren Meyers

This volume offers a comprehensive discussion of Media Memory and brings Media and Mediation to the forefront of Collective Memory research. The essays explore a diversity of media technologies (television, radio, film and new media), genres (news, fiction, documentaries) and contexts (US, UK, Spain, Nigeria, Germany and the Middle East).

Within the rapidly growing body of collective memory studies, relatively modest attention has been dedicated to the operation of journalists as agents of collective recollecting. Accordingly, this study probes the mnemonic role of journalists; specifically, it looks at the ways in which journalism operates within large-scale cultural rereadings the collective past. Moreover, this study illuminates the complex relations between journalism and academia, within the context of the narration of the past: while previous works have focused on the contrasts between these two mnemonic agencies this study aims to portray the full spectrum of interrelations between journalists and academics as narrators of the past - from conflict to cooperation.
Throughout the last three decades an ongoing debate over the facts and meanings of the Israeli past has surged across a multitude of cultural arenas. This process has been extensively discussed through the perspective of the scholarly debate over the rise (and fall?) of Israel's "new historiography." Yet, little has been written about the role of journalists in fueling and framing the rereading the national narrative. Consequently, this chapter offers an analytical scheme for the investigation of the operation of journalists as agents of collective memory through four, interconnected realms of journalistic activity: the first trajectory looks at how journalists narrate academic debates over the past and its meaning, and structure such debates into the contours of routine journalistic coverage. Correspondingly, the second trajectory looks at how scholars utilize journalistic inputs in order to study collective memory and to imagine the public. The third trajectory explores the ways in which journalists articulate stories of the collective national past through commemorative and non-commemorative newswork. The fourth, interrelated trajectory focuses on stories that Israeli journalists account about the past of their own occupational community, and the ways in which such narrations are anchored within discussions of the collective past.

This article considers the benefits and challenges of implementing a life history approach towards the study of media professionals. The observations discussed in the article are anchored in a research project analyzing the occupational life histories of 77 active and former Israeli journalists. The article first discusses the decisions made throughout the planning and implementation of the project. Next, it explores three key features of the dynamics of life history interviewing, and looks at the multi-layered scheme devised to address its analysis. Finally, the article examines the ways in which data gathered through life history interviews can be generalized, and the extent to which the academic community accepts the use of data collected outside the global center to develop generally applicable theory.

Professionalism is a concept that centers on specialization of labor and control of occupational practice. It has traditionally been used to describe and define individuals who are affiliated with an occupational community that has managed to secure a certain measure of autonomy and jurisdiction over an area of expertise and has a claim to a public service ethos. In this review essay, we consider the changing professional status of journalism. Whether or not journalism is " truly " a profession, it is clear that a discourse of journalistic professionalism plays a crucial role in legitimizing the journalistic occupation. Consequently, this essay explores different approaches towards the professionalization of journalism and positions this discussion within two interrelated contexts: first, it investigates the ramifications of the current crisis in western news media on journalistic professionalism. Next, the essay probes the professional standing of journalism in view of the development of new digital technologies that are reshaping essential aspects of journalistic work. We conclude that journalism has lost some of its cohesion and fragmented into tribes of professionalism practiced by a diverse set of actors. Studying journalism and journalists Journalism studies aims to explore journalistic practices, norms, routines, and values while situating them within larger social frameworks. That is, scholars of journalism do not only investigate the way in which journalists conduct their work but also offer insights regarding the complex relations between how journalists think about their work and how they actually execute it. Moreover, many studies of journalism aspire to frame journalistic work as a product of the norms, values, and institutions of the societies in which journalists work while also considering the potential impact journalists have (or might have) on societies and their institutions. We review this literature with a special emphasis on the extent to which journalism operates as a cohesive profession. The examination of journalistic work and its meaning has been operationalized through a multitude of research strategies and methodologies. Based on the three traditional foci of communication research (text, reception, and production), the exploration of journalists and journalism has been answered through the analysis of texts produced by journalists (Bird & Dardenne 2008); via investigations of the opinions and perceptions of media consumers regarding journalistic values and practices and the social status of journalists (e.g., Tsfati, Meyers & Peri 2006); and by observing journalists and interviewing them (e.g., Tuchman 2002). In general, it is possible to define three basic arguments that characterize studies of journalism: first, news items exist because journalists apply mutually agreed upon work procedures in order to observe, portray, and interpret occurrences. These reported occurrences do not have any real time or space limits: those limits are imposed as the occurrences unfold due to normative, budgetary , and technological considerations and constraints. Second, occurrences are not inherently

This essay defines the concept of collective memory and discusses its main characteristics as a social and cultural phenomenon. Next, it focuses on the study of a salient realm of collective recollecting - media memory; that is, the exploration of collective pasts that are narrated by the media, through the media and about the media. Finally, the essay looks at key research trajectories shaping media memory studies and the current challenges facing this realm of scholarship.

This article looks at how sonic media rituals are created, performed, and negotiated to understand the ways in which citizens are persuaded to risk their lives in the name of the imagined national community. It does so through an analysis of the representation of civil–military relations on the veteran Israeli radio program Kola Shel Ima (" Mom's Voice "). As shown, the performance of the Kola Shel Ima ritual is enabled because of off-air preparations, on-air conversations, and common values shared by ritual participants. Yet, at times various components of the ritual are challenged on-air. On a larger scale, the debate over Kola Shel Ima positions it as a ritual of flashing out or, conversely, a ritual of covering up.

מחקר זה מעוגן בתפיסה המבקשת לבחון את התקשורת והמשפט כמערכות פרשניות ומעניקות משמעות, הפועלות בהתייחס להקשרים תרבותיים. המחקר מיישם תפיסה זאת באמצעות בחינת האופנים שבאמצעותם שתי המערכות - המשפט והעיתונות - הבנו ומסגרו את זיכרון פרשת רצח הנער דני כץ ז"ל. ניתוח זה מאפשר לעמוד על מאפייני הפעולה של כל אחת מן המערכות כסוכנות של זיכרון קולקטיבי, על האופן שבו שתי המערכות מעצבות את זיכרון העבר, ועל הדרך שבה מיוצגים פסקי הדין בעיתונות, ומנגד, האופן שבו מיוצגת העיתונות בפסקי הדין.
הביקורת השכיחה כנגד הסיקור התקשורתי של מערכת המשפט, היא שהעיתונאים מפנימים את ערכי המערכת, ובכך נעשים חלק מתרבות השיח המשפטי. ממצאי המחקר מלמדים על תמונת מצב הפוכה: לא רק שמרבית הקולות בעיתונות לא אימצו את קולה של מערכת המשפט, אלא שהללו תקפו את המערכת, עד כדי "שפיטה מזכה" של המורשעים. בכך תרמו העיתונאים לחתירה כנגד ה"ריטואלים המתקנים" שהציעה המערכת המשפטית לשיכוך המתח ואי הבהירות סביב הפרשה. לטענתנו, ביקורת עיתונאית זאת התאפשרה, במידה רבה, משום שבמהלך השנים נשמעו קולות מאתגרים, שטענו לחפות המורשעים, מתוך מערכת המשפט עצמה. וכך, בדומה לעולה ממחקר היחסים שבין העיתונות לממסד הפוליטי - קיים קשר הדוק וישר בין חשיפה של אי-הסכמות              פנים-מערכתיות לבין נכונות של העיתונות למתוח ביקורת על המערכת

Journalism studies scholarship tends to emphasize professionalism as an occupational ideal, while scholarship on the culture industries stresses the salience of insecure careers.  We argue that an exhaustive typology of journalism careers is needed to capture the potential variability in the structure of journalistic labor.  This typology distinguishes professional, bureaucratic, entrepreneurial, unwillingly entrepreneurial and non-employed careers, and is relevant to a broader set of occupations in the culture industries.  We illustrate this typology through an analysis of the occupational life histories of 60 Israeli journalists. This allows us to explain the dual nature of professionalism in journalism as a rhetoric nested within particular institutional contexts and this occupational rhetoric’s splitting into “tribes of professionalism.”

Against the background of the crisis in the journalism industry many journalists have decided to leave the occupation for other activities. We examine the reasons journalists give for leaving journalism, or remaining in it; the exit mechanisms they use; the destinations they choose and broader repercussions for Israeli journalism and the culture industries. We base this examination on a sample of 60 life histories of active and former Israeli journalists, analyzed through the use of the “Exit, Voice and Loyalty” (EVL) typology developed by Albert Hirschman. Additionally, we investigate specific exit mechanisms and destinations using Bourdieu’s notions of capital. We argue that applying the EVL typology to the data suggests the easy availability of exit routes out of journalism together with journalists' difficulty in voicing their occupational concerns within news organizations, given their chaotic organizational structure, contributed to news organizations’ passive response to the crisis.

The study explores 33 occupational life histories of current and former Israeli journalists. By doing so, it enables us to better understand how the fundamental changes that the journalistic profession underwent during recent decades shaped and influenced the occupational progression of Israeli journalists. Our interviews validate previous work on the partial professional standing of journalism showing that individuals enter journalism in a protracted and uneven manner. In addition, the analysis of modes of reasoning for entering journalism charts the informal boundaries of overt of journalistic political identification. Finally, an exploration of self-narrated occupational highs and lows shows that career highs are always identified as personal achievements while career lows are mostly narrated as outcomes of larger organizational or institutional constrains. And so, the current chaotic nature of journalism organizations, as reflected in our life history corpus illustrates an environment in which there is a clear disconnect between actions and rewards.

The article explores the journalistic coverage of the public crisis that developed, following the publication of Yediot Aharonot’s investigative report about the diving practices of Israel’s sea commandos in the polluted Kishon River. The coverage of the Kishon diving crisis is probed via two, complementing research trajectories: the first trajectory looks at the construction of the newsworthiness of the Kishon diving crisis in comparison to two, similar crises, while addressing the interpretations provided by various involved factors. The second trajectory explores the various frames through which the Kishon diving crises was narrated. The article’s concluding section discusses the complex interrelations between newsworthiness and framing.

This article argues that existing scholarship on paradigmatic crises in journalism neglects some of the fundamental dynamics that were explored in Kuhn’s original work. In order to fully conceptualize the creation and alteration of news paradigms, journalism scholars ought to study ‘paradigmatic challenges’: the multifaceted ways by which journalistic communities react to planned, methodical, and continuous challenges that offer comprehensive paradigmatic alternatives to existing core professional convictions. To operationalize this research interest, the article explores a salient case study: the multi-dimensional response of early Israeli mainstream journalism to the paradigmatic challenge posed by the radical and sensational weekly Haolam Hazeh.

The concept of “criticism” and the journalistic practice of “criticism” are considered as one of the most important foundations of free press. Thus, much research has examined the degree to which journalists are critical of those in power. Nevertheless, most existing scholarship does not usually address the fundamental question of what “journalistic criticism” is and tends to treat this phenomenon as self-evident. Consequently, this study explores the concept of "journalistic criticism" from theoretical and empirical perspectives. To achieve this goal the study analyzes the ways in which journalists shape representations of criticism through their coverage of events in general and especially in times of war and conflict.
Specifically, this study probes representations of criticism that appeared in the Israeli news media during the Second Lebanon War (July-August 2006). We present two models that deconstruct critical journalistic texts: the first model tracks the various possible sources, contents and objects of journalistic criticism; the second model explores the different possible levels of journalistic criticism that either  reaffirms the establishment's viewpoint or challenges its values and actions.  The discussion explores the use of "reaffirming criticism" as a tool enabling journalists that cover their own national conflict to express fierce criticism as professionals, without challenging the basic assumptions of the establishment.

This study explores the ways in which commercialmedia perceive and manifest their public mnemonic role. It does so via an exploration of the ‘‘memorymenu’’—the contents and flow
of programming—offered by Channel 2, Israel’s leading commercial television channel, on the eve of the country’s Memorial Day for the Holocaust and the Heroism (MDHH),
in which the airing of commercials is banned. In order to do so, the study incorporates a multilevel analysis that probes the structure of entire broadcasting evenings as well as
the narrative building blocks that constitute each item. The study investigates the ways in which commercial media outlets operate in the context of ‘‘commercial vacuums’’ as
they substitute material capital with symbolic capital. This process is illuminated through Channel 2’s inability to work MDHH into its extremely successful routine broadcasting
formulas. The channel’s MDHH broadcasts construct a commemorative narrative that is insulated from day-to-day Israeli public Holocaust memory discourse; hence they operate
as a significant site of Israeli postmemory work. Furthermore, such a narrative not only commemorates the memory of the Holocaust itself but also the ways in which Israeli culture
used to narrate the memory of the Holocaust in the past.

The paper explores the use of nostalgia in advertising as a practice that shapes perceptions of the collective past. It offers the idea of the "realm of memory" as a means of conceptualizing the way in which advertising represents the past. The positioning of products as constructed realms of memory offers consumers an emotional and immediate connection to an assumed better past. While doing so, advertising also influences the way consumers perceive "real" history, "as it was," through all the means that were formerly investigated through collective memory studies: selection, personification, construction through the use of various narrative patterns and more.

The article explores the ways in which the weekly Haolam Hazeh (in Hebrew: This World) earned its reputation as the definitive "designated maverick" of Israeli journalism during the 1950s and 1960s. It does so via an investigation of the journalistic practices through which Haolam Hazeh constructed a first-of-its kind model of critical Israeli journalism combining a seemingly clashing mix of radical politics, investigative reporting, sensationalism, and sexually explicit contents. The self-positioning of Haolam Hazeh as a maverick publication, as well as its corresponding positioning by the Israeli mainstream journalistic community, delineated the professional ethos, inner conflicts and boundaries of that journalistic community in that era. Moreover, analysis of Haolam Hazeh's journalistic formula illuminates the dynamic and contextual nature of the relations between mainstream and alternative media.

The article looks at the role of journalists as collective memory agents via an investigation of the interplay between the stories journalists tell as professionals and the stories they tell about their profession. It does so through an exploration of the stories that Israeli journalists have narrated about the sensational and radical weekly Haolam Hazeh (in Hebrew: This World; 1937-1993) over time and the ways in which such stories reflect and shape the changing professional self-perceptions of the Israeli journalistic community. The article first looks into the dynamics through which Haolam Hazeh became the "functional transgressor" of Israeli journalism during the 1950s and 1960s. Next, it probes the complementing commemorative and non-commemorative components of Haolam Hazeh's current glorified memory, as a forefather of critical Israeli journalism. Correspondingly, the article traces the conditions and circumstances that facilitated this process. Finally, the article discusses the ways by which the inquiry of transformed journalistic reputations could be used as a framework for the exploration of the development of communal journalistic consciousness.

The article explores the process by which Israeli journalists of the country's early years forged their communal identity. Through a multi-faceted survey of primary and secondary data the article investigates how Israeli journalists of the 1950s and 1960s thought and wrote about issues such as the importance of the journalistic profession; the sources of their own professional authority; reporting conventions; and their assessments of good and bad journalism and the appropriate ways to distinguish between the two. The article also offers an exploration of how fundamental tensions between ideological and professional affiliations were concretized via various journalistic "areas of contention." Thus, the article indicates how debates over specific issues such as preferred journalistic writing styles, or the optimal relations between Israeli media and the military censor, could be better understood within the larger context of this process of communal journalistic self-definition.

This article aims to position the question of how television narrates the past within the context of the debate over the differences, or rather overlaps between history and memory. The approach to this task unfolds via two complementing trajectories. The first, discusses several fundamental approaches towards the study of the interrelations between history and memory while focusing on Pierre Nora's concept of the "realms of memory." The article argues that the much-noted effectiveness of televised representations of the past (and especially those that combine fictional and non-fictional components) evolves from their use of storytelling strategies that bestow upon such productions the qualities of both memory and history.
The second trajectory of the article explores the realm of memory concept through its implementation in one paradigmatic example: the miniseries The '60s, which was aired on NBC in 1999. The article contends that The '60s - and by extension, other historical television movies - are created and consumed as constructed realms of memory that are shaped and amplified by the conventions of popular culture. When The'60s was aired on American television it aimed to constitute a popular meeting point between history and memory: it established its status as a valid and even documentary representation of the past through various "historical" means. At the same time, through the utilization of dramatic conventions and common images that are embedded within American collective memory The '60s offered its viewers a sense of a live past that they could experience as members of an imagined intimate community.
Finally, the article probes the ways by which The '60s shaped a narrative that is both authoritative and emotionally potent via some of the fundamental concepts offered by Hayden White in his analysis of historical accounts: the construction of The '60s' narrative through a process of selection and omission; the means through which the storytellers of the narrative established their own authority; and the morals or messages that emerge from the narrative.

This article investigates the ways in which Israel’s history was presented via photographs and texts in commemorative supplements of three Israeli newspapers marking the country’s anniversaries. Based on theoretical works that describe and define national identity, the creation of collective memories
and the social role of photography, this article explores the supplements through their selection of events, narrators, continuity and coherence strategies, construction of time, and their definition of the national group.
The article argues that a gradual change in the supplements demonstrates changes in the way Israelis perceive their collective memories, and the relevance of those memories to their ever-changing present. While the earlier
supplements perceive Israeli past through an authoritarian master narrative, some of the later supplements tend to interpret this past through varied perspectives and as a tool of many, sometimes contrasting, causes. Furthermore,
although all the supplements narrate their stories through similar “protagonists,” similar events, or even the same photographs, this presentation serves varied interpretations. This phenomenon demonstrates the effectiveness of visual imagery in the processes of both constructing and deconstructing collective memories.

The article investigates the 1988 music album Efer Veavak (in Hebrew: Ashes and Dust) that was created by Yehuda Poliker and Ya'akov Gilad, two Israeli--born children of Holocaust survivors’ parents.  The article’s findings suggest that the Holocaust story as told through Ashes and Dust emphasizes individual aspects rather than collective lessons and there is a growing sensitivity to the issue of memory preservation. Moreover, Ashes and Dust highlights the notion that the survivors' children are now the bearers of Holocaust memory, and that it is through them that the Holocaust becomes an Israeli story about the present, rather than only a Diaspora story about the past.
These tendencies are amplified by the fact that Ashes and Dust is a popular culture product. The public use of the songs through radio broadcasting has in many cases caused them to be assimilated into the mainstream flow and has blurred their initial identification as markers of a singular event, the Holocaust.

In the last three decades, the question of Israeli migration to the U.S. has become the subject of many scholarly works. The fact that the phenomenon of migration from Israel has come to be known as yerida (descending) while migration to Israel is described as aliya (ascending) reveals the profound nature of the emotional and ideological factors in the relations between the migrants and their fellow countrymen who stayed in Israel.
An investigation of the Israeli migrant media deepens the understanding of this unique community. The study of the media organizations that serve a community that declines to define itself as a community - or at least declined to do so in the past - reveals the mechanisms through which the migrants deal with the inherent conflicts in which they exist. In a larger sense, a study of the way Israeli migrants perceive themselves and their relations with Israel across a period of time illuminates broader phenomenon within Israeli society. The weekly Israel Shelanu (Our Israel), the oldest Israeli migrant newspaper in the U.S., was established in September 1979. It ceased to appear in August 1998 due to gradual circulation decline. I have decided to focus my investigation on Israel Shelanu since its relative seniority enabled me to sample it at three distinct time periods. Also, several studies have identified the consumption of Israel Shelanu as a characteristic of the migrants' patterns of social behavior.
The findings of this study suggest that, in its first year of publication, Israel Shelanu's coverage of Israeli migration to the U.S., Israeli and Jewish-American migration (back) to Israel, and the development of an institutional migrants' community was in accordance with official Israeli perceptions. At the same time, the newspaper used several tactics to legitimize migrants as individuals while continuing to criticize the phenomenon of migration. In order to decode this duality we should consider the concept of the "permanent sojourner," which delineates the co-existence of declarative intentions of going back to Israel combined with day-to-day activities that contrast these intentions. I would argue that Israel Shelanu's first year issues reflected the public dimension of the personal "permanent sojourner" rift. That is, the newspaper mirrored the migrants' inner conflicts, while at the same time suggested mechanisms through which the community and its individual members could come to terms with the crisis: the separation between the personal and the declarative levels practiced by the newspaper offered a feasible solution for this conflicted state of existence.
The findings of the eighth and final year of publication show a gradual decline in the coverage of the migration as a problem, coupled with a gradual increase in the coverage of successful migrants and institutional activities. This change reflects the collective shift of the migrant community from  "permanent sojourner" status to "settler" status, or rather a shift from a community in denial to a "normal" migrant community. By offering this shift in coverage themes and interpretive approaches, Israel Shelanu, again simultaneously mirrored social changes while offering its readers images that helped to construct this new reality.

This study explores the multi-layered interrelations between the production of news and
collective remembering. We investigate this phenomenon by analyzing television
newscasts aired on Israel’s Memorial Day for the Holocaust and Heroism (MDHH),
1994_2007. These newscasts provide a rich research corpus because they stand at the
intersection between two types of rituals: the everyday ritual of newsmaking, and the
national commemorative ritual, for which the media serves as a main site of
articulation.
The article implements a ‘‘zoom in’’ perspective: first, we examine the broadcasting
schedules, exploring the role of newscasts in the process of leading the audiences in and
out of the commemorative ritual. Next, we suggest a typology distinguishing between (a)
items dealing with current events, (b) commemorative items focusing on Holocaust
remembrance, and (c) dog whistle items that are ‘‘attuned’’ to the specific cultural ear
and thus enable mundane news items to be interpreted as related to Holocaust
commemoration.
We argue that the dual aim of the items featured in MDHH newscasts to provide both
news values and commemorative values leads to the construction of ‘‘reversed memory,’’
a narrative that commemorates past events (the ‘‘there and then’’) by narrating present
events (the ‘‘here and now’’). Reversed memory commemorates the difficult past through the achievements of the present, and thus not only eases the collective confrontation with
painful traumas, but rather avoids this encounter altogether.