Headline Hunter

Ilana Dayan is Israel’s top TV journalist.

July 17, 2009

Dan Pine
j. the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California

Question: Do you agree that the American media is “too patriotic and submissive”?

Journalist Ilana Dayan chuckled when others compare her long-running Israeli TV news magazine, “Udva,” to “60 Minutes.” It’s a nice compliment, but not entirely accurate.

For starters, she estimated the budget for a single Mike Wallace “gotcha” segment would bankroll her entire show for a year.

On the other hand, like the venerable CBS program, Ms. Dayan’s show covers the wide, wide world of news, from an hour-long grilling of the Israeli prime minister to a look at a group of Israeli vegetarians who eat nothing cooked (their slogan: “The whole world is a salad”).

Since 1993, Ms. Dayan has been the chief correspondent for “Udva” (Hebrew for “fact”), as well as host of a daily radio show, which makes her one of Israel’s most recognizable journalists. It’s a mantle she does not take lightly.

She said the Israeli press is “very aggressive, very curious, very fast on its feet, very skeptical, sometimes cynical. All of this is true.”

Ms. Dayan had a chance to expound on that when she delivered a keynote speech at the 14th annual Guardians of Democracy dinner, a fundraiser for the New Israel Fund, in San Francisco.

Her speech shed light on the conflicting dynamics in Israeli society: Arab vs. Jew, secular vs. religious, Jewish vs. democratic.

“I try to convey a sense of Israel both as a civil society and yet a country very much engaged in a fight for its own existence,” she said. “These two agendas basically don’t coincide. You can hardly incorporate them in the fabric of one nation. This is a uniquely Israeli experiment. You cannot think of another modern nation trying to be both.”

As Israeli TV is hard to pick up here, Ms. Dayan’s face and name might not be familiar. Back home, she’s the quintessential TV journalist-as-rock star, though she said that wears thin.

“I cannot evade the fact that I am considered kind of a celebrity,” she said. “I always joke that I live at the corner of Britney Spears and Ed Murrow. People see you as a celebrity, and for that you’re admired and loved. On the other hand, the profession does not mandate that from the audience. It’s an inherent contradiction.”

Of Russian descent, Ms. Dayan was born in Argentina. At age 6, her family made aliyah. Her interest in journalism developed during her military service and came about accidentally.

Her commanding officers gave her two options: intelligence or military radio. She chose the latter, and at the age of 18, Ms. Dayan was on the air. By 19, she was the IDF’s parliamentary correspondent, and by 20, she was reading the morning news.

Her star continued to rise. At age 23, Ms. Dayan became the first woman anchor of “New Evening,” a television interview program in Israel. But she interrupted her broadcasting career to study law, first at Tel Aviv University and then Yale. The very day she earned her law degree, Ms. Dayan received a call from Israel.

“I was contacted by one of the companies competing in the bid for running the first commercial channel in Israel,” she recalled of those early conversations about launching an Israeli news magazine for television. “It was Channel 2, where I work to this day.”

Over the years, she has covered everything from Israel’s top rock stars to its poorest citizens. Ms. Dayan has also covered the terrorism beat, reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. “It’s not even controversial,” she said. “It’s not sleeping with the enemy. People want to see and understand.”

Though she admired her counterparts in American broadcast journalism, she saw differences between the American and Israeli styles.

“Characteristics that make American media too patriotic and submissive and sometimes self-censored are less evident [in Israel],” she said. “Call it chutzpah, but Israelis are prepared to ventilate the dark past of our lives, our fiascos, our wrongdoings, our evils.”

And though the days of Barbara Walters brokering deals between Begin and Sadat seem to be over, Ms. Dayan isn’t so sure.

“It can happen again,” she said. “There was something magic about that. But there was a moment of grace and two leaders ready to grasp it. That’s what we lack today: a moment of grace and admirable leaders.”