Although the upset of the El Al Shabbat flight affair is waning, it's important to address how it was handled and reported. To a large extent, the scandal exemplifies a pattern of behavior toward different sectors of society that is difficult to apprehend.
Let's imagine the following scenario: 50 vegans on a regular flight suspect that their meal contained meat. The flight attendants promise the angry passengers that their specially-ordered vegan meals did not contain meat. Imagine how the passengers would respond the moment one of them learned that the airline had lied to them.
The vegans would raise hell after the discovery, and would have understanding and support from media outlets. The public would receive an accurate, appropriate report about the incident. It wouldn't occur to anyone that the airline would betray its passengers' trust.
Despite the fact that the ultra-Orthodox passengers on the Shabbat flight had been deliberately misled and forced to desecrate Shabbat, unwillingly violating one of the tenets of their faith, they didn't riot. This minor fact didn't stop media outlets from leaping on biased video clips that showed stereotypical images of primitive, violent haredim, frightening the miserable flight crew – terror in the skies.
The amazing thing is the total absence of any news outlets who made a minimal effort to clarify the facts before broadcasting the footage. Any young and inexperienced editor, even at a local outlet, would do better journalistic work and investigate the matter before reporting it.
The news broadcasts used the biased El Al version of events, and some of them didn't even bother to make a pretense of objectivity. One broadcast stuck to the narrative put out by El Al – a commercial company, remember – and repeatedly reported the "haredi outbursts." The report was so biased that the El Al spokesman said that a complaint would be filed against the haredim who rioted on the flight.
If it hadn't been for the report by Israel Hayom correspondent Yehuda Shlezinger, who was on the flight in question and busted the false story open, the truth would never have been told outside of social media. We would have been left with a fake version and a healthy helping of anti-haredi hatred served up on a silver tray of weekend ratings. Who knows how many similar cases we've witnessed without ever learning the truth?
On the Ulpan Shishi ("Friday Studio") program, when all the details were already out, no member of the panel expressed the slightest self-criticism or regret for the earlier false reports. The same media figures who often take a righteous stance against the discourse of hatred saw no need to say anything about the slander they helped spread. What's more, when the full picture had already been made clear, and it was clear who the perpetrator and who the victims were, anchor Danny Kushmaro mocked the El Al apology, remarking: "The airline might wind up opening a kollel [study center] for these haredim."
Maybe he said that to make it clear that the righteous haredi mask hides a blackmailer who is trying to squeeze benefits out of innocent companies.
That is what hatred looks like, and that is the anatomy of fake news.
