US president-elect Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have different methods of attacking their enemies. And yet they often share the same target: their critics in the media.
Trump's threats are frequently more overt, as in his recent Tweet that his "lawyers want to sue the failing [New York Times] so badly for irresponsible intent." Meanwhile Netanyahu's attempts at thwarting the media are more subtle.
However both share a sensitivity to criticism and desire to control public information that bodes ill for journalistic freedom.
"Throughout his campaign, Trump has routinely made vague proposals to limit basic elements of press and internet freedom," the Committee to Protect Journalists said in October. "We take Trump at his word."
The state of journalism in Israel after several years under Netanyahu may be a glimpse of what's to come after Trump is in the White House.
Freedom House, a non-governmental watchdog organization, earlier this year downgraded Israel's rank to "partly free," due in part to the popularity of the pro-Netanyahu Israel Today newspaper, subsidized by Trump campaign donor and US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
In his most recent tiff, the prime minister this week responded to an investigative report about him on Channel 2 with a statement that personally attacked Ilana Dayan, the journalist who had produced it.
But Netanyahu's difficult relationship with the media goes way back. He famously said that journalists were "afraid" of the possibility that he could win another general election in 1999.
He also rarely gives interviews, and instead releases statements through social media or through his government press office.
The Freedom House report also mentions Netanyahu's decision to name himself as communications minister, "giving him control over the regulation of various segments of the market," as well as an ongoing battle over a public broadcasting corporation set to open in 2017.
The new broadcast corporation was set to replace the outdated and bloated Israeli Broadcasting Authority (IBA) beginning January 1, but Netanyahu has pushed to toss out the new effort and instead keep the IBA open, which critics see as a move to have them quieted.
In light of Netanyahu's attempts to scrap the new broadcaster, the Israeli Democracy Institute held an emergency meeting last month to condemn the action, saying that if the prime minister succeeded, it would "transform our democracy's watchdogs into watch-puppies."
Israeli journalist Ben Caspit summarized the general feelings during the meeting: "All are afraid. Few write what they really think."
Without the levers of government, Trump has already attempted to tamp down on free expression by using legal intimidation and social media.
Journalist Alisyn Camerota said in January that Trump's Tweets had a chilling effect in an interview with CNN. "You don't want all of his Twitter followers to come at you with that Twitter hate," she said.
Trump was "ahead of the curve in that he learned how to become his own media outlet long ago," writes Joel Simon, a columnist with the Columbia Journalism Review, citing media researcher William Powers.
And even if Trump veers from Netanyahu's path towards clamping down on the media, his very presence in the White House as an outspoken enemy of the media has international implications for journalists.
"A Trump presidency would represent a threat to press freedom in the United States, but the consequences for the rights of journalists around the world could be far more serious," according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
"Any failure of the United States to uphold its own standards emboldens dictators and despots to restrict the media in their own countries."
By Miranda Lee Murray
