The Honest Take: TRAILER

Show Notes

Welcome to The Honest Take, the new long-form interview podcast from HonestReporting.

For 25 years, HonestReporting has been the global watchdog on media bias against Israel — monitoring newsrooms, calling out distortion, and forcing corrections from some of the world's most powerful outlets. The Honest Take is where we go beyond the rapid response and sit down with the people who understand what's really happening: journalists, scholars, lawyers, diplomats, and activists.

Hosted by Ben Chertoff, every episode is a sustained conversation about the stories the mainstream keeps getting wrong — antisemitism, the war in Gaza, the UN, campus politics, the future of Jewish life, and the fight for truth in an information war.

Subscribe now. New episodes weekly.

Featuring voices including Hillel Neuer (UN Watch), Shai Davidai, Yardena Schwartz, Yossi Klein Halevi, and many, many more.

Creators and Guests

Host

Ben Chertoff

Senior Producer and Presenter at Honest Reporting

What is The Honest Take?

The Honest Take is HonestReporting's long-form interview series bringing together leading voices to examine how Israel and the Middle East are covered — and what goes into creating and feeding the narratives that target Israel.

Each episode features leading experts, analysts, researchers, and journalists who work on media bias, terrorism, NGO accountability, foreign influence, antisemitism, and international institutions. These are professionals directly involved in investigating how narratives are shaped, amplified, and protected across global newsrooms.

The conversations go beyond breaking news to unpack:
• Media bias and misinformation about Israel
• How terrorist organizations exploit humanitarian and civil society frameworks
• The role of NGOs and international bodies in shaping public perception
• Foreign state influence on Western media and education
• Why context disappears in reporting on Israel and the Palestinians

This series is for listeners seeking in-depth analysis, evidence-based discussion, and accountability in journalism on Israel and the Middle East.

HonestReporting: That double standard, that is the anti-Semitism. October 7th happens in Israel and then October 8th happened in the diaspora. What was really shocking to me as a journalist was to see how 100 years later, how far journalism has fallen. Honest reporting has been defending Israel from media bias since 2000. Monitoring global coverage, calling out distortion, and holding newsrooms accountable. Now, we're opening up the conversation. The Honest Take is our long-form interview series, bringing together the journalists, scholars, lawyers, and activists who see what the headlines miss. No spin, just conversations about the stories that matter. So you kind of buckle up, you suck it up, you go in there, you stand tall, and you speak words of truth. And that's the real danger about this American intellectual antisemitism, that it disguises itself as a moral virtue. I just couldn't help but realize how many other truths of this conflict are hiding in plain sight and how often these inconvenient truths go unreported or unmentioned because of the ways in which they undercut the narrative. You know, the Jewish people, we're one of those ancient peoples that invented the story. And we should be able to do better than we're doing in telling our story. The Honest Take. Subscribe wherever you get your pod. tests.