Earlier this month two senior Ma’ariv journalists, environment reporter Aviv Lavie and social matters and welfare reporter Ruth Sinai, were summonses to meetings with their superiors. The meetings, technically formal hearings, were followed by their dismissals. Their stories reveal a small fraction of the way the paper is run under new owner Nochi Dankner and the editor whom he appointed, Nir Hefetz.

Soon after his appointment to the position the editor of Ma'ariv, Hefetz met with the paper’s reporters and commentators. One commentator was not invited to the gathering:  Aviv Lavie. Even when he was actually sacked, it was not the editor who informed Lavie about it, but one of his deputies (Neta Livne). When told by Lavie of his dismissal, section editors were stunned; not one of them knew about it beforehand.

The fact that Lavie had never talked to Hefetz makes it difficult to gauge the real motives behind the decision to sack him. While Lavie has been told that the reason for his dismissal had to do with financial cutbacks, the word inside the Ma'ariv building is quite different, but it too is based on nothing more than educated guesses.

The first hunch is that everything is personal.  It was no coincidence that Hefetz did not invite Lavie to a hearing  and did not tell him in person of his dismissal. Back in August 2001 Lavie, then a media commentator for Haaretz, wrote a column critical of Hefetz when the latter was a candidate for CEO of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority. The general view is Lavie’s words had considerable weight in sinking the nomination, and that Lavie’s current sacking may be directly related to it.

Another view suggests that Hefetz had decided to wipe the building clean of Ma'ariv’s social voices, in the widest sense of the term. Many sources in the building quoted Hefetz as saying in various meetings that “the [J14] summer social protest movement does not interest me” and that the movement  was “lightweight”. Lavie, whose columns contained a strong flavour of “social” analysis in the sense of examining the unequal distribution of resources in society, was caught in the line of fire in this context.

But in Lavie’s case, he copped double the fire because he did not just deal with social issues. His articles frequently dealt with the interests of corporations, the tycoons and even those of Nochi Dankner himself. Hefetz, according to this interpretation which reverberates around the building, is acting as Dankner’s operational arm in Ma'ariv. Another view suggests that  even if Dankner had not given explicit instructions to Hefetz as to whom  to fire, Hefetz has an ardent desire to implement a policy that he thinks would meet with Dankner’s approval," as relayed by a source familiar with the case.

Finally, there are those inside Ma’ariv whose assessment is that "the real reason for Lavie’s dismissal is not related to personal issues or Dankner or the K14 protest. “Hefetz just think that nobody gives a stuff about the environment, so he decided to cut back in an area that in his opinion wasn’t sufficiently important" said a source at the newspaper. When Hefetz realised his mistake after having  received the large pile of protest letters at the sacking of Lavie, he hastened to appoint  Adi Hasmonai, who usually covers events in the north of the country, and Aviad Pohoryles, a football commentator (!-tr) to cover the topic.

It is difficult to tell which of the hypotheses is correct:  it is possible that the official reason (cutbacks, cutbacks) may be accurate, and it may be a combination of different reasons or all of them put together. Lavie himself refused to discuss the matter.

But one person who actually talks openly about her dismissal is Ruth Sinai. Like Lavie, she was summoned to a hearing and then fired. According to her, at the very time that Dankner bought the paper the then editor, Avi Meshulam, approached her and told her he intended to make Ma’ariv a newspaper with social concerns. "He offered me a double-page spread once a week in the news section, columns of commentary and analysis, and more. This was the basis upon which I was hired. My contract began on August 20. Sinai's honeymoon did not last even 30 days; within a week of her signing the contract, Meshulam was himself dismissed. "His removal removed his grand plans with him, and in fact I was put into deep freeze", describes Sinai.

This freeze appears to have had some disturbing journalistic aspects.  Some of Sinai's particular stories about this or that injustice were indeed published, but many commentary and analysis columns relating to the fundamental issues of the relationship between economy and society were excluded, rejected, and not published.

Thus, for example, when the columnist asked as to when will Israeli moguls will pay real tax, the column was not printed. A column wondering if the J14 social protest was about to erupt again was not published. An item that dealt with the harsh treatment meted by employers to foreign care-givers (a - apropos of a story about Sara Netanyahu’s father’s care-giver) was not published. A column for a major holiday supplement which wondered whether  the settlers will begin to focus on the social character of the state was rejected for publication. An article dealing with strikes in the Haifa Chemicals was declined. And a story dealing with medical interns was also spiked.

When Sinai was supposed to do a story on contract workers (not published in the printed version of the paper), she received an SMS from one of the editors: "Do not romanticise the protest movement”. When she wrote about the recommendation of the Trajtenberg report concerning the dismantling monopolies and used the Ramle cement-making plant as an example alluded to in the report, "One of the editors sought my permission to delete this example, because the plant belongs to Dankner. I convinced him there was no need and it remained in the story and thus published, but is an example of the way of thinking that pervades the place”, recalls Sinai.

Eventually Sinai gave up. She requested a meeting with Hefetz. At that meeting her editor told her that people who earn 15-20 thousand shekels a month and take to the streets to protest do not interest him, and that their protest is not serious. ‘Post-Zionist reporters will not write for my paper’, he said, adding that he wants me to write about the Dimona cleaner who earns NIS 4,000 a month".

"I never came across a newspaper where the editor decides what the paper will not cover”, says Sinai. "I know newspapers which talk in positive terms but this editor made it clear as to what will not happen. When I told him that my talents were not being used properly and that I wanted to write a column, he answered immediately: 'You will not get a column'. I offered to write a dummy version and let him then decide.  I wrote it, and he rejected the column” says Sinai.

After her meeting with Hefetz Sinai’s freeze out reached its zenith, until she was called to a hearing in which it was made clear to her that when Dankner took over the newspaper, the editorial stuff was increased by 25 per cent, and now, short time later, the clock was being wound back by cutting back 25 per cent. "It’s a classical privatisation technique: they do not give you any work, then they tell you you're not contributing anything and then they sack you. I am amused by the claim that the lay-offs are taking place owing to financial constraints. While I was being fired they hired general manager with an annual salary of two million and a signing-on bonus of hundreds of thousands of shekels. I was earning a gross 15 thousand shekels a month.”

After being dismissed, Sinai spent a fair while pondering her situation and then decided to take an unusual step: She wrote a letter to the paper’s ultimate controller, Nochi Dankner. "I told him that it was impossible to separate economy and society. You cannot say that you will only publish stories about the poor, without providing the context and reasoning as to why they are poor. Even if you want to write about that cleaner from Dimona, you need to explain why she earns just 4,000 shekels.”

She says, "[her previous employer]the publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, did not like my opinions, but he never prevented me from writing, nor did he ever stop the editors from placing my reports on the front page, and because of this prominence I won the Sokolow prize for journalism [Equivalent to the Australian Walkley or US Pulitzer prize-tr] . Did anything happen to Haaretz in consequence of it? On the contrary it conveys strength.  And this is precisely what I wrote to Dankner: a multiplicity of opinions conveys strength”.

Sinai, who has an MA in Communications from Columbia University and is a former Associated Press reporter, says that she has probably been thrown out of the profession forever. "I know that my voice matter, I'm sure I do have something to contribute, but no newspaper is willing to hire me."

Ma’ariv chose not to respond.

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Dr Yuval Dror is a senior technology reporter and commentator and Head of Digital Media at the College of Management Academic Studies.

The article was originally posted in Hebrew on Dec. 19, 2011, and translated to English by Sol Salbe of the Middle East News Service.