After Presspectiva Exposé, Channel 13’s Omri Maniv Removed from Education Reporting

Omri Maniv, the investigative and education reporter at Israel’s leading Channel 13 who was suspended last month for a broadcast which falsely accused Rabbi Asaf Naumberg of the Otzem pre-military academy of making vitriolic, bigoted statements, returned to work in recent days, but will no longer report on education, several Israeli news sites report.

In an exclusive Channel 11 interview (below, in Hebrew) Sept. 8,  Hanan Amiur, editor-in-chief of Presspectiva, CAMERA’s Hebrew site, exposed Maniv’s August 28 broadcast as false, demonstrating that the educator was clearly role-playing when he made statements vilifying secular people and urging avoidance of military draft, depicting extremist ultra-Orthodox views diametrically opposed to his own worldview, which embraces those with differing political views and secular people, and which repudiates anti-Arab racism. Maniv’s defamatory broadcast was explosive during the heated election season, giving that the academy’s founder is Education Minister Rafi Peretz of the Jewish Home party.

While Maniv initially stood by his report when Presspectiva’s Amiur contacted him, the Channel 13 apologized after the Channel 11 exposé rocked the Israeli media and political scene, prompting a series of apologies and retractions on the part of other journalists who had picked up on Maniv’s false story, alongside politicians who had condemned Rabbi Naumberg and the Otzem academy for its alleged incitement.