Israeli Journalism during the State's Formative Era

This article explores the process by which Israeli journalists in the 1950s and the 1960s forged a communal identity by thinking and writing about issues such as the importance of the journalistic profession, sources of their professional authority, reporting conventions, and their assessments of good and bad journalism and the appropriate ways to distinguish between them. It also explores how fundamental tensions between ideological and professional affiliations were concretized via various journalistic “areas of contention.” Thus, it indicates how debates over specific issues, such as preferred journalistic writing styles or the optimal relations between the Israeli media and military censors, could be better understood within the larger context of this process of journalistic self-definition.