Reporters
ReportersiStock

Nearly 200 foreign journalists came from all over the world to cover the 22nd Knesset election.

The communications center established by the Government Press Office is up and ready to provide them up-to-date, professional, and reliable information from all the events, including direct broadcasts and updates from the Central Election Commission.

Government Press Office Director Nitzan Chen tells Arutz Sheva: "Less than 24 hours until the elections, hundreds of journalists came to Israel to survey the elections in addition to the foreign reporters who are here regularly. The 2019 election is definitely an international event.

"To the media center established by the GPO will arrive tomorrow morning journalists from Australia, Japan, Spain, Sweden, Germany; there's almost no place on the globe that didn't send reporters here. Israeli elections are of interest to the world, especially whether Netanyahu will remain Prime Minister. Foreign media - outside of Netanyahu - hardly knows anyone. The elections are also interesting and challenging to the international media."

The GPO Communication Center will provide every foreign correspondent with an information packet on the system of government in Israel and the various parties, and political experts will accompany foreign correspondents in various languages to help them understand what is happening in Israeli elections.

"Foreign media wants to deliver the results in real time - not after 24 hours - they want to copy Israeli media like Arutz Sheva or the Haaretz newspaper," Chen explains.

Israeli citizens have the impression that foreign media is against Israel and the Israeli Right.

"The foreign media doesn't work for us. There are narratives that come back to the media from Western Europe or the U.S., narratives that don't like us, to say the least, but ultimately elections in Israel are a particularly huge event as Prime Minister Netanyahu said he would annex the Jordan Valley.

"All the topics at issue make the election an international event and many in the foreign media did magazine articles with the candidates. The 2019 elections are perhaps less interesting to Israeli society but very interesting to the foreign media around the world."

ניצן חן ראש לשכת העיתונות הממשלתית