Mediatization, Legal Logic and the Coverage of Israeli Politicians on Trial

Abstract

This paper investigates the characteristics that point to the mediatization of legal coverage in Israel, and the adoption of media rather than legal logic in the coverage of five trials of key political figures between 1961 and 2012 in two leading Israeli newspapers. Using insights from the literature on the mediatization of political coverage, our analysis focused on the changes over time in the type of dramatization of trial news; in the nature of criticism expressed in the press; in the forms of journalists' interventions and judgments; in the context of the meta-coverage of media advisors and media initiatives by legal actors; and the media's own reflections about these interventions. We found that the mediatization of the legal sphere resulted in a “trial by media” where journalists pass judgments on defendants and present media alternatives to legal procedures. Moreover, meta-coverage of the media strategies of legal actors was accompanied by “counter-interventionism”, i.e., journalistic criticism of their own role in cooperating with the media interventions of legal actors. We suggest that this “counter-interventionism” is tied to the defense of the legal sphere by legal journalists.