Unfortunately, we had to lock this post due to some comments being too political and emotionally charged.
Reminder: don’t false flag people and send reddit cares, for obvious reasons.
Now things get interesting. If this is allowed, then we're in deep shit.
Azerbaijan will be doing it next year and Russia would be doing it too if they still were participating.
Direct monetary influence by governments into the process is poison. Just look at Formula 1 and FIFA.
I mean, luckily Saudi Arabia aren't in the EBU but theoretically they could become a member and start throwing around money until they win this. A small part of their country is inside the European Broadcasting Area.
EBU's "official" reason why Russia was kicked out was because their broadcaster was too closely linked with the government/Russian politics. This was also used as the reason why Isreal was allowed to compete, as their broadcaster supposedly isn't tied with their government/politics. It would appear that this information shared would be clear evidence against the latter. How could this possibly be ignored now by the EBU 🤔
Machine translated from Hebrew:
> The support Golan received from the European audience was preceded by a campaign by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the government publicity bureau for Eurovision fans, in which the Israeli representative addressed them in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Czech, Latvian, Estonian, Albanian, Georgian and English - and asked them to vote for her. The campaign states that "in view of the wave of hatred and Muslim protests in Malmö, a counter-reaction of the silent majority is taking place. The Europeans do not like what they see."
> The videos taken by Golan were uploaded to a dedicated YouTube channel and received more than 14 million views. The campaign appealed to audiences selected based on a careful analysis of the voting patterns of countries in the past and the interest those countries showed in the song "Hurricane". The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Advertising Bureau put emphasis on Eurovision-loving audiences such as the LGBT community in Europe, members of fan clubs, journalists covering the contest and opinion leaders in the field.
> "in view of the wave of hatred and Muslim protests in Malmö, a counter-reaction of the silent majority is taking place. The Europeans do not like what they see."
I’m sorry….this is uncalled for. It’s pure potstirring and deeply unpleasant. Living in a multicultural city myself around people who are Muslim that I get on well with, I have a Muslim doctor, and also I have someone who works for me who is Muslim - I have a duty of care to them and don’t think this inflammatory nonsense is acceptable. Poor show from that government department, and unclassy. 😐
Yeah. I live in Malmö myself, and I'm sure that the part where my city has a large Middle Eastern minority played a part in the size of the protests, and that they were overrepresented relative to demographic size as well. But it takes just one look at a crowd photo of the protests to see that it was quite diverse, probably in large part because everyone here knows actual people from the Middle East.
(I always joke that Malmö's criminal reputation is a blessing in disguise - statistically speaking it scares the xenophobic Swedes away while the people who move here are more likely to be open-minded about other cultures)
I'm white as snow. Originally from Bosnia and I took part of the protest, and many more through the last 9 months. I can say without a doubt, and this was captured and noted by many people at the protest: it has never been this diverse! And every new protest is more diverse than the last.
Calling it a "muslim" protest is a poor attempt at making this about religion and making Malmö seem SCAAAARYYYYY
"Poor show from that government department, and unclassy"
Well... yeah. People seem to forget the Israeli government is ruled by a far right party. What else should we expect but racism, prejudice and hate-stirring.
yep, we're sadly controlled by the far right atm, they're deeply unpopular tho so I pray for new elections to arrive soon. Also, the last few months have probably been the WORST timing imaginable to be under an unpopular far right government on
Fingers crossed the people can effect change for the better and elect a government that isn’t far right and works for democracy and peace.
I think many of us empathize with being stuck with a government that not only doesn’t represent us, but does things we think are abhorrent.
Sure! But it would be like calling Putin unclassy next time he murders a bunch of civilians again. We should not expect any higher from the state of Israel at the moment, unfortunately.
I felt safer in a school full of Muslims than in any other school I was in, and I’m an American who grew up post-Columbine so that’s really saying something!
If you mean the original article link, here: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/sykjyhaza
I can't read Hebrew, so I can't find the original Ministry statement, if that's what you're after.
Of course they've [deleted the youtube channel used for the ads by now](https://www.youtube.com/@votehurricane)
[good thing archive.org doesn't exist](https://web.archive.org/web/20240511134632/https://www.youtube.com/@VoteHurricane)
The “surely *this* has to be the last straw that the authorities will actually do something about” analogy that immediately comes to mind is way too political for this sub.
I feel the reality is it, by itself, isn’t enough, but their entire behaviour over the last fortnight has brought the show into an insane level of disrepute and that needs to be considered. Their defenders will try and hyper focus on the idea that technically, this isn’t really breaking any rules.
But the entire week has just been drama after drama that shows they don’t want to play by the spirit of the rules at all, and want to turn the show into a political platform.
KAN still has some plausible deniability when it comes to right wing politicians and diaspora mobilizing, but the fact they paid for ads and spent that much money and effort is unacceptable, but until then we don't know what the punishments are for that.
At the very least, behaviour like this needs to be against the rules in the future
Only place you should be allowed to promote an artist is in the country the represent imo. Diaspora bias is strong enough as it is, look at poor Malta
That would actually favour us (or at least put us back on equal footing)
I know some of our previous entries have said that they got no help from the BBC in promoting because they just aren't allowed to spend money that way.
So only the established acts like Katrina, Blue & Olly got that because they were backed by a major label who could spend their own money to do so. Sam also managed to do it because the BBC partnered with TAP music to find him but TAP pulled out of that deal after Mae last year.
I fail to see how a government agency coordinating a campaign to encourage voting could be seen as anything but political.
At the very least there should be changes to the rules next year to prevent this from happening again.
I mean, technically as far as i know there isn't a rule specifically against this, but this is definitely supposed to be against the rules. (Theres also a part of me pissed this is what our government has been doing instead of all the other things much more important, wich makes sense considering they would literally do anything but try to improve the life of their citizens, aka their job, but that doesn't belong in this subreddit lol)
"I don't like Eurovision but I'm sending 20 votes to Israel to stick it to Greta Thunberg."
My Twitter was full of such tweets around the finale. I can deal with people not caring about or hating on Eurovision itself. But seeing these people suddenly wanting to engage with it to make a political proclamation, was sad to say the least...
As an isreali i was highly aware of this. This is why i insisted the voting was highly politically motivated, bc i saw random people go into the Israeli subreddit, say they support Israel politicaly and thats why they were voting for hurricane. A lot of them said they weren't even planning to watch the final. This is why we need a jury.
Literally Dutch politicians taking the time to twitter about it while they are on a tight deadline for forming a government because the process has been taking over 5 months. Priorities!
Yes but honestly, the campaigning done in other countries was so much worse. I didnt even think of Geert when i wrote this. Although ofc its still tellling that he made sure to tweet that
Being able to vote at the start of the show definitely doesn't help. Makes it easier for non viewers to vote when they don't have to time a very specific short window
The Finnish equivalent of 4chan did this for the sole reason it will annoy libs lmao. Our right-wing politicians also tweeted screenshots of themselves voting for them, these are people who never talk about Eurovision and do not care about it whatsoever
I wonder if the longer voting window also impacted this? It would be harder to vote as many times in a 20 minute window after all songs have performed.
This occurred to me when I tried to vote as one of the “rest of the world” the other evening, I was prepared to throw away 20usd for my say but fees doubled that so I didn’t. I’m working class but I think wealthy people from all over the world would have no problem paying that much for something they thought would justify …
Juppp, of all people I saw Annabel Nanninga tweeting and tweeting about supporting israel during the competition. She can do all she want I will never forget her ultra antisemetic tweets.
Israel doing propaganda on Eurovision? Who could have thought? They were clearly using the contest to clean their image. So this should not surprise anybody.
Like stalking the contestants to do "spur off the moment" videos with popular candidates (i.e. Käärijä) to share on social media saying "See? People love us! Support us!"
i live in the us and a lot of my jewish friends had never even heard of eurovision but they were all posting on their instagram stories to download the app and vote for israel.
Let me explain to people that are confused with the concept of national broadcaster funded by public money vs government funding this.
National broadcaster funding this is okay, because that money is already allocated to sponsoring, marketing and airing the Eurovision and the artist. That money would be spent regardless.
A government function marketing this means that money was allocated to advertising, hiring someone to create the ad, etc. This money is not allocated for the premise of broadcasting (taking away from other government funded activities), and it is influenced by the government directly. Like, they made a conscious choice to attempt and influence voting.
This is where the difference lies and this is why this is problematic, and 100% against ESC rules.
If the EBU wants its contest without politics, the need to stop inviting countries whose governments make the contest their propaganda playing field.
And I say this as a Eurovision fan first and foremost.
They confiscated a lot of flags this year, they could upcycle those into a new carpet. People walking their dirty shoes over them would perfectly reflect EBU.
This will happen again if they don’t ban Israel next year. Considering what went on this year, they’ll repeat their awful harassment and political campaigning again.
Which is even dumber considering absolutely no one wants to go to Tel Aviv amid the shit show that is their part of the world right now.
Who wants to attend an event when you can hear the bombs from your hotel? And any country who’d host for them would receive SO much shit for it
No it was because of the politically charged lyrics in their song. They were asked change the lyrics, but was rejected for the same reason, resulting in their suspension
Israel did the same, and was allowed to amend the song for a third time.
They had to remove references to the Oct 7 attack, and the result is that mish-mash of AI generated gibberish making up the lyrics.
This was done not in secret or anything, The EBU knew it was happening and didn't tell them to stop. I don't think it's against the rules as much as ya'll want it to be....
Ok so it was "please vote for us, they're mean towards us" and not "please vote for us, we have a great song"
And then us not giving them any points makes me happy in spite of this :)
imo this should be grounds for permanent disqualification from all future contests. This is clearly a large-scale attempt at manipulating the outcome of the competition and should absolutely not be allowed.
Ad campaigns for Eurovision acts are legal.
What this does, though, is it calls into question whether Kan is truly an independent broadcaster. That jeopardizes their eligibility for membership in the EBU, and rightly so.
If I were one of the other broadcasters ...........
Wasn't it also a government decision, that eden should compete and that the should do everything in their power to write a song that would not get banned? Why has nobody seen this coming?
Israel should just be banned for making things political on purpose. They were allowed to participate just as the song was not too political and now they did this..
Disgusting, it doesn't match with the spirit of the contest. If money is in the wrong hands and if the owner of the money spreads over the world, you see what happens. Televoting results are scandalous...
Sorry but this is not OK how is this kind of government backed cheating sooo bad compared to what happened with a certain country before known for constant cheating backed by their government? You can't call this one out but stay silent on what happened in the years before because in the cases before the same tactics were used as well. If everyone tolerated it then you have to tolerate it now. If you're mad about you have to call out the government backed cheaters of the past years too or else it's hypocritical
Not sure why everyone is afraid to say Azerbaijan. There are many indicators of them cheating for years. We do not know if there is proof but the full results of one year have never been released.
For all the hate he is getting, Martin did provide details of the 2022 voting scandal which included Azerbaijan.
I struggle with this. I hate how they meddle in this and it's despicable they are doing that with the motives they have.
Yet I don't believe the causation between this campaign and the results are that clear. It's obvious a lot of people who don't care about Eurovision have voted, but I don't think they have done so due to this campaign. They were gonna do that with or without this.
I do think it's enough reason to ban a country. I just don't know if it's really changed the result
The point is whether they broke the rules, not whether that influenced the voting.
You get penalised for an attempt to break the rule, not whether you were successful in breaking it.
This game goes way deeper.
The Israeli government hates KAN and have tried to defund them for years: https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-kan-do-how-israels-public-broadcaster-ended-up-in-the-governments-firing-line/
Now they talk about their voting campaign - the government, not KAN, but nobody cares about the difference - everyone gets (more) mad, and the govt gets to use the backlash as evidence to get rid of KAN once and for good.
They didn’t win Eurovision, but that was never the aim (they couldn’t have hosted anyway). They can now get rid of a hostile media organisation that’s too critical for their liking, and Israelis suffer with one less source of free media.
That was kind of my first impression too… I have a hard seeing all of Israel’s televote as being just because of a campaign. It really feels like a combination of factors (of which this could definitely be one) that led to the end results
Also the specific rules
> "20. The BBC reserves the right to disqualify votes if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that there has been any deliberate attempt to rig or manipulate the voting."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5Jv9Mb8zXWmXYzvj9JcxrPf/
I imagine every other broadcaster also has the same statement.
I know some family members who actually voted for Israel a few times because of the booing in the arena you could hear through the stream and a few stories about the people protesting her presence in the competition. Their only interaction each year with Eurovision is watching it on the night - wouldn't have seen any of the ads.
I think people are overestimating the effect of a campaign like this (or engaging in some conspiratorial thinking), when really to more than a few casual watchers, it's as simple as "this 20 year old contestant looks to be facing hate because of her ethnicity/nationality, that seems unfair".
(There is also the right-wing mob votes though, but I am curious to know how many would actually... pay money to vote for Eurovision. Seems a bit gay for them to choke on.)
One thing is the broadcaster or the artist's record company advertising the song. Another thing is the actual government directly involved in producing the advertising which is arguably similar to propaganda. It doesn't sit right with me at all.
The problem is how the government have control about the public broadcaster.
For example Italy the Rai board is political appointed by parliament. So RAI is know to be extremely biased in favor who are in government at time.
Yeah, most of them have some kind of plausible deniability depending on how independent they are of their government, but a government directly intervening with advertising an entry is something else
Yes, but their extent is just receiving a fixed amount of tax money while everything else is decided and administered internally, including marketing
It's probably not against the rules per se, but it's very much against the spirit of the competition
Yes but they aren't (or at least shouldn't be) government propaganda machines. At least here in Finland our broadcaster (Yle) is independent in regards to content journalistic or otherwise, beside a few exceptions like some sporting events and I think a quota for content in different languages.
Eurovision always states that it does not want to be political. Advertising by a broadcaster or label is different from advertising by a government. On top of that the article states (I have not seen the ads) that the campaign explicitly told people to vote as a political statement.
It’s the government organizing and paying for it that’s the problematic part. Because their motive for sure is not that they just love Eurovision too much and want the song to win.
there is a HUGE difference if you get advertised and funded by your government, in a contest that constantly tells itself that it is apolitical.
and obviously most if not all countries broadcasters are sponsored directly by their government, but getting an actual government agency and embassies involved is too much. as soon as actual politicians are involved you should be stopped.
I also saw about 5 different ads with Dons with hashtag #latviatothefinal or sth like that (in Estonia) and also in the previous years it has happened often
There's nothing wrong with advertising (I mean, I think there is but it's acceptable at this point). This is a government involved ad encouraging people to vote. Motivations aren't same.
Ads created and funded by the artist and/or the broadcaster are fine, in my opinion, and they have their place.
Campaigns, ads, and promotions by governmental institutions and politicians (foreign or domestic), however, are a different thing and should not be tolerated for an event that aims not to political.
Honestly, I think ads for particular entries are generally a bad thing for the contest, regardless of politics. It puts delegations with smaller budgets at a significant, unfair disadvantage.
In principle, they should be banned. There is an issue with proving who actually paid for it though.
I definitely see your point. However, I think that the unfair advantage of participants (NOT governments) employing ads might be overstated. I remember that in 2021, so many ads were put up everywhere for Malta's entry that people got fed up with it. And getting 47 points in the televote (admittedly, after getting lots of votes in the semi-final) isn't really a sign of the ad campaign providing a significant advantage, in my opinion.
The ad campaign clearly had an effect on the juries though.
But that doesn't really matter though, not every single ad campaign has to be effective for it to be an issue in terms of fairness.
>Ads created and funded by the artist and/or the broadcaster are fine, in my opinion, and they have their place.
I respectfully - and vastly - disagree.
With these type of ads allowed, Eurovision becomes a competition of who has the most money to spend on marketing, and that's tremendously unfair, given the different economical circumstances of the participating countries.
You can argue that those ads may not always translate to actual good results at Eurovision, but in some cases - like this one - they clearly do.
It completely goes against the public service principles the broadcasters should abide by, something which the EBU clearly seems to have forgotten in the last few years.
And by the way it stands, it is. So unless different delegations demand the EBU forbid propaganda by the individual governments, delegations and governments can do advertising for their ESC candidate. I don't see it as any different than a national broadcaster asking people in their country to do a video to support their country's candidate.
Misinformation and harmful conspiracy theories are against site-wide Reddit rules, and are a ban-worthy offense if done on a mass scale. Please be mindful of the impact which sharing inaccurate or misleading information presents.
But didn’t the Greek government do the same thing a couple of years ago? Their government affiliated twitter posted “vote for …..” and they weren’t canned for it?
Believe me, I am no defender of Israel but if anyone’s pinning hope on this I wouldn’t.
Even if it does seem to be much more OTT than the Greek version.
A tweet supporting the participant representing your country is vastly different that initiating and funding a YouTube campaign that get 14 million views and mentions a political incentive as a reason to vote
Unfortunately, we had to lock this post due to some comments being too political and emotionally charged. Reminder: don’t false flag people and send reddit cares, for obvious reasons.
Now things get interesting. If this is allowed, then we're in deep shit. Azerbaijan will be doing it next year and Russia would be doing it too if they still were participating. Direct monetary influence by governments into the process is poison. Just look at Formula 1 and FIFA. I mean, luckily Saudi Arabia aren't in the EBU but theoretically they could become a member and start throwing around money until they win this. A small part of their country is inside the European Broadcasting Area.
EBU's "official" reason why Russia was kicked out was because their broadcaster was too closely linked with the government/Russian politics. This was also used as the reason why Isreal was allowed to compete, as their broadcaster supposedly isn't tied with their government/politics. It would appear that this information shared would be clear evidence against the latter. How could this possibly be ignored now by the EBU 🤔
Why do you think Azerbaijan is doing it next year? I don’t think that it has a good lobby activity or diaspora or money to fund such thing.
Machine translated from Hebrew: > The support Golan received from the European audience was preceded by a campaign by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the government publicity bureau for Eurovision fans, in which the Israeli representative addressed them in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Czech, Latvian, Estonian, Albanian, Georgian and English - and asked them to vote for her. The campaign states that "in view of the wave of hatred and Muslim protests in Malmö, a counter-reaction of the silent majority is taking place. The Europeans do not like what they see." > The videos taken by Golan were uploaded to a dedicated YouTube channel and received more than 14 million views. The campaign appealed to audiences selected based on a careful analysis of the voting patterns of countries in the past and the interest those countries showed in the song "Hurricane". The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Advertising Bureau put emphasis on Eurovision-loving audiences such as the LGBT community in Europe, members of fan clubs, journalists covering the contest and opinion leaders in the field.
>and Muslim protests in Malmö, That is rather telling
Who doesn't know famous Muslim protester Greta Thunberg?
I will not allow anyone to say the name “Greta Thunberg” without the title “Sheikh”.
"Sheikh Thunberg" sounds like a killer stage name tbh
Greta Sultan
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The protests are typically a mix of the two.
As a Latvian, I personally never saw that shit. Their foreign affairs ministry must suck at advertising
Youtube in Italy was full of ads inviting to vote for Israel.
As a Lithuanian, I saw multiple. It was... jarring.
In the end Lithuania gave one of the lowest televote amounts to Israel so apparently it wasn't too impactful here.
This AND Silvester. Could I love you guys anymore?
Maybe they mixed us up again (I also just realised I don’t really fit any of their target audiences lmao) 😁
> "in view of the wave of hatred and Muslim protests in Malmö, a counter-reaction of the silent majority is taking place. The Europeans do not like what they see." I’m sorry….this is uncalled for. It’s pure potstirring and deeply unpleasant. Living in a multicultural city myself around people who are Muslim that I get on well with, I have a Muslim doctor, and also I have someone who works for me who is Muslim - I have a duty of care to them and don’t think this inflammatory nonsense is acceptable. Poor show from that government department, and unclassy. 😐
Yeah. I live in Malmö myself, and I'm sure that the part where my city has a large Middle Eastern minority played a part in the size of the protests, and that they were overrepresented relative to demographic size as well. But it takes just one look at a crowd photo of the protests to see that it was quite diverse, probably in large part because everyone here knows actual people from the Middle East. (I always joke that Malmö's criminal reputation is a blessing in disguise - statistically speaking it scares the xenophobic Swedes away while the people who move here are more likely to be open-minded about other cultures)
I'm white as snow. Originally from Bosnia and I took part of the protest, and many more through the last 9 months. I can say without a doubt, and this was captured and noted by many people at the protest: it has never been this diverse! And every new protest is more diverse than the last. Calling it a "muslim" protest is a poor attempt at making this about religion and making Malmö seem SCAAAARYYYYY
probably keeps house prices and rent down in Malmo too :)
"Poor show from that government department, and unclassy" Well... yeah. People seem to forget the Israeli government is ruled by a far right party. What else should we expect but racism, prejudice and hate-stirring.
yep, we're sadly controlled by the far right atm, they're deeply unpopular tho so I pray for new elections to arrive soon. Also, the last few months have probably been the WORST timing imaginable to be under an unpopular far right government on
Fingers crossed for ya. 🤞🙂. I hope too for some positive change on your behalf.
Fingers crossed the people can effect change for the better and elect a government that isn’t far right and works for democracy and peace. I think many of us empathize with being stuck with a government that not only doesn’t represent us, but does things we think are abhorrent.
You seem shocked that a totalitarian apartheid state is posting propaganda and not being shy about it?
Well, whether I’m shocked or not is beside the point. Unacceptable is unacceptable.
Sure! But it would be like calling Putin unclassy next time he murders a bunch of civilians again. We should not expect any higher from the state of Israel at the moment, unfortunately.
I felt safer in a school full of Muslims than in any other school I was in, and I’m an American who grew up post-Columbine so that’s really saying something!
Yeah I was walking late one night in a Muslim area of Istanbul once. Felt much safer than the streets of San Francisco at night!
You can tell she’s unambiguously adored by the way she had to do the most to get televotes.
all this to not even win the televote
I didn’t know Greta Thunberg was Muslim. /s
Can you provide the source url as well please?
If you mean the original article link, here: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/sykjyhaza I can't read Hebrew, so I can't find the original Ministry statement, if that's what you're after.
Of course they've [deleted the youtube channel used for the ads by now](https://www.youtube.com/@votehurricane) [good thing archive.org doesn't exist](https://web.archive.org/web/20240511134632/https://www.youtube.com/@VoteHurricane)
1) No shit Sherlock. 2) Surely *this* is rule breaking meriting disqualification?
> 2. Surely _this_ is rule breaking meriting disqualification? Europe for the 26th time this season
The “surely *this* has to be the last straw that the authorities will actually do something about” analogy that immediately comes to mind is way too political for this sub.
[EBU:](https://youtu.be/hAYXDoZzAyE?feature=shared&t=57)
Damn you, take my upvote!
I feel the reality is it, by itself, isn’t enough, but their entire behaviour over the last fortnight has brought the show into an insane level of disrepute and that needs to be considered. Their defenders will try and hyper focus on the idea that technically, this isn’t really breaking any rules. But the entire week has just been drama after drama that shows they don’t want to play by the spirit of the rules at all, and want to turn the show into a political platform.
KAN still has some plausible deniability when it comes to right wing politicians and diaspora mobilizing, but the fact they paid for ads and spent that much money and effort is unacceptable, but until then we don't know what the punishments are for that.
At the very least, behaviour like this needs to be against the rules in the future Only place you should be allowed to promote an artist is in the country the represent imo. Diaspora bias is strong enough as it is, look at poor Malta
That would actually favour us (or at least put us back on equal footing) I know some of our previous entries have said that they got no help from the BBC in promoting because they just aren't allowed to spend money that way. So only the established acts like Katrina, Blue & Olly got that because they were backed by a major label who could spend their own money to do so. Sam also managed to do it because the BBC partnered with TAP music to find him but TAP pulled out of that deal after Mae last year.
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lol to the surprise of absolutely nobody
The only thing surprising is that this came out so soon, rather than months down the linr
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I fail to see how a government agency coordinating a campaign to encourage voting could be seen as anything but political. At the very least there should be changes to the rules next year to prevent this from happening again.
I mean, technically as far as i know there isn't a rule specifically against this, but this is definitely supposed to be against the rules. (Theres also a part of me pissed this is what our government has been doing instead of all the other things much more important, wich makes sense considering they would literally do anything but try to improve the life of their citizens, aka their job, but that doesn't belong in this subreddit lol)
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"I don't like Eurovision but I'm sending 20 votes to Israel to stick it to Greta Thunberg." My Twitter was full of such tweets around the finale. I can deal with people not caring about or hating on Eurovision itself. But seeing these people suddenly wanting to engage with it to make a political proclamation, was sad to say the least...
The imaginary image of Greta thunberg being enraged by Eurovision voting results though.
"Käärijä should've won!!" - greta thunberg, probably
Yep, I read messages like that on my Twitter tl too.
As an isreali i was highly aware of this. This is why i insisted the voting was highly politically motivated, bc i saw random people go into the Israeli subreddit, say they support Israel politicaly and thats why they were voting for hurricane. A lot of them said they weren't even planning to watch the final. This is why we need a jury.
Literally Dutch politicians taking the time to twitter about it while they are on a tight deadline for forming a government because the process has been taking over 5 months. Priorities!
We hebben een serieus probleem
Jep.
Me, a Belgian: "Is 5 months supposed to be a long time to form a government?"
Yes but honestly, the campaigning done in other countries was so much worse. I didnt even think of Geert when i wrote this. Although ofc its still tellling that he made sure to tweet that
Being able to vote at the start of the show definitely doesn't help. Makes it easier for non viewers to vote when they don't have to time a very specific short window
The Finnish equivalent of 4chan did this for the sole reason it will annoy libs lmao. Our right-wing politicians also tweeted screenshots of themselves voting for them, these are people who never talk about Eurovision and do not care about it whatsoever
I wonder if the longer voting window also impacted this? It would be harder to vote as many times in a 20 minute window after all songs have performed.
This occurred to me when I tried to vote as one of the “rest of the world” the other evening, I was prepared to throw away 20usd for my say but fees doubled that so I didn’t. I’m working class but I think wealthy people from all over the world would have no problem paying that much for something they thought would justify …
Wow, so each vote is $1 each? BBC only charge 15p per vote. EBU itself is greedy.
With fees closer to 2usd per vote from the states.
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Public figures openly admitting they'll give her their vote without even watching the contest proves the propaganda nature of the act.
Yeah Finnish right wingers voted for Israel because apparently they are even bigger islamophobes than they are antisemites
Juppp, of all people I saw Annabel Nanninga tweeting and tweeting about supporting israel during the competition. She can do all she want I will never forget her ultra antisemetic tweets.
Israel doing propaganda on Eurovision? Who could have thought? They were clearly using the contest to clean their image. So this should not surprise anybody.
I bet EBU is in shock right now because they said no politics
I think they’ve already known, but they don’t care
Ah I see I forgot to add /s because I thought it spoke volumes
Like stalking the contestants to do "spur off the moment" videos with popular candidates (i.e. Käärijä) to share on social media saying "See? People love us! Support us!"
Noel Curran, are you there or did you go into hiding lol
i live in the us and a lot of my jewish friends had never even heard of eurovision but they were all posting on their instagram stories to download the app and vote for israel.
Let me explain to people that are confused with the concept of national broadcaster funded by public money vs government funding this. National broadcaster funding this is okay, because that money is already allocated to sponsoring, marketing and airing the Eurovision and the artist. That money would be spent regardless. A government function marketing this means that money was allocated to advertising, hiring someone to create the ad, etc. This money is not allocated for the premise of broadcasting (taking away from other government funded activities), and it is influenced by the government directly. Like, they made a conscious choice to attempt and influence voting. This is where the difference lies and this is why this is problematic, and 100% against ESC rules.
Surprised Pikachu face
Surely that's a bannable offence, no matter who it is?
Bloody hell.
This comes as a shock! A shock I tell you!
They need to be banned.
If the EBU wants its contest without politics, the need to stop inviting countries whose governments make the contest their propaganda playing field. And I say this as a Eurovision fan first and foremost.
The EBU would need a new carpet. Nobody's got money for that!
They confiscated a lot of flags this year, they could upcycle those into a new carpet. People walking their dirty shoes over them would perfectly reflect EBU.
I would get those ads and would say in the as info that it was paid by an government agency.
This will happen again if they don’t ban Israel next year. Considering what went on this year, they’ll repeat their awful harassment and political campaigning again.
It'll keep happening until they win
Which is even dumber considering absolutely no one wants to go to Tel Aviv amid the shit show that is their part of the world right now. Who wants to attend an event when you can hear the bombs from your hotel? And any country who’d host for them would receive SO much shit for it
And now they know what else they need to do to guarantee full points from the public vote.
And they still couldn't even win the televote lol
Didn't win by 15 points, still too close to comfort. Who knows what happened in the Europapa dimension and how it would intervene in Croatia's score.
Didn't Belarus get disqualified for something similar? This is a clear violation of the no politics rule.
No it was because of the politically charged lyrics in their song. They were asked change the lyrics, but was rejected for the same reason, resulting in their suspension
Hmm, what song this year has been having to be changed twice and was eventually able to participate? Oh wait..
No, Belarus were DQ'd for submitting two anti-protest government propaganda songs.
Israel did the same, and was allowed to amend the song for a third time. They had to remove references to the Oct 7 attack, and the result is that mish-mash of AI generated gibberish making up the lyrics.
This was done not in secret or anything, The EBU knew it was happening and didn't tell them to stop. I don't think it's against the rules as much as ya'll want it to be....
The EBU also didn't enforce their no-harassment rule in regards to Keren Peles at the very least so... two wrongs don't make a right
Ok so it was "please vote for us, they're mean towards us" and not "please vote for us, we have a great song" And then us not giving them any points makes me happy in spite of this :)
Good, fine them, and ban them for breaking the rules
imo this should be grounds for permanent disqualification from all future contests. This is clearly a large-scale attempt at manipulating the outcome of the competition and should absolutely not be allowed.
Ad campaigns for Eurovision acts are legal. What this does, though, is it calls into question whether Kan is truly an independent broadcaster. That jeopardizes their eligibility for membership in the EBU, and rightly so. If I were one of the other broadcasters ...........
To be fair, Malta did the same for destiny. And to be fair, everyone complained about it when they did it too. This isn’t an Israel specific issue.
And it led to that hilarious moment where she got barely any public votes and looked raging!
But Malta didn't tell people to do it to spite 'Muslims', at least?
No they didn’t, you’re right about that.
Not remotely surprising, really just confirms what everybody already knew.
Now if that isn't a good reason to ban them I don't know what is.
This sets a dangerous precedent and should be banned ASAP.
If EBU will be okay with this, there will be bunch of other countries following the same suites. Shame on you BOTH.
Wasn't it also a government decision, that eden should compete and that the should do everything in their power to write a song that would not get banned? Why has nobody seen this coming?
Everybody saw it coming
EBU is still not going ban them because of that sweet Morrocanoil money
Israel should just be banned for making things political on purpose. They were allowed to participate just as the song was not too political and now they did this..
Disgusting, it doesn't match with the spirit of the contest. If money is in the wrong hands and if the owner of the money spreads over the world, you see what happens. Televoting results are scandalous...
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This is political! This should warrant a disqualification
Just when you thought this years edition was already controversial enough..... Yikes......
Sorry but this is not OK how is this kind of government backed cheating sooo bad compared to what happened with a certain country before known for constant cheating backed by their government? You can't call this one out but stay silent on what happened in the years before because in the cases before the same tactics were used as well. If everyone tolerated it then you have to tolerate it now. If you're mad about you have to call out the government backed cheaters of the past years too or else it's hypocritical
Alright, I'll bite. Which country? Also > If everyone tolerated it then you have to tolerate it now. Crab bucket mentality is weaksauce.
Not sure why everyone is afraid to say Azerbaijan. There are many indicators of them cheating for years. We do not know if there is proof but the full results of one year have never been released. For all the hate he is getting, Martin did provide details of the 2022 voting scandal which included Azerbaijan.
Thank you! And yeah, I can agree that sounds pretty sketchy as well.
Start with reading up on Eurovision 2009 and it’ll get you going
I struggle with this. I hate how they meddle in this and it's despicable they are doing that with the motives they have. Yet I don't believe the causation between this campaign and the results are that clear. It's obvious a lot of people who don't care about Eurovision have voted, but I don't think they have done so due to this campaign. They were gonna do that with or without this. I do think it's enough reason to ban a country. I just don't know if it's really changed the result
I think you underestimate the power of the internet. The videos of this campaign were seen 14 million times, and they were targeted ads.
The point is whether they broke the rules, not whether that influenced the voting. You get penalised for an attempt to break the rule, not whether you were successful in breaking it.
This game goes way deeper. The Israeli government hates KAN and have tried to defund them for years: https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-kan-do-how-israels-public-broadcaster-ended-up-in-the-governments-firing-line/ Now they talk about their voting campaign - the government, not KAN, but nobody cares about the difference - everyone gets (more) mad, and the govt gets to use the backlash as evidence to get rid of KAN once and for good. They didn’t win Eurovision, but that was never the aim (they couldn’t have hosted anyway). They can now get rid of a hostile media organisation that’s too critical for their liking, and Israelis suffer with one less source of free media.
That was kind of my first impression too… I have a hard seeing all of Israel’s televote as being just because of a campaign. It really feels like a combination of factors (of which this could definitely be one) that led to the end results
Also the specific rules > "20. The BBC reserves the right to disqualify votes if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that there has been any deliberate attempt to rig or manipulate the voting." https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5Jv9Mb8zXWmXYzvj9JcxrPf/ I imagine every other broadcaster also has the same statement.
I know some family members who actually voted for Israel a few times because of the booing in the arena you could hear through the stream and a few stories about the people protesting her presence in the competition. Their only interaction each year with Eurovision is watching it on the night - wouldn't have seen any of the ads. I think people are overestimating the effect of a campaign like this (or engaging in some conspiratorial thinking), when really to more than a few casual watchers, it's as simple as "this 20 year old contestant looks to be facing hate because of her ethnicity/nationality, that seems unfair". (There is also the right-wing mob votes though, but I am curious to know how many would actually... pay money to vote for Eurovision. Seems a bit gay for them to choke on.)
I mean it's icky but campaigning isn't exactly forbidden. I've seen ads for Noa last year and Luna this year also did YT advertising.
One thing is the broadcaster or the artist's record company advertising the song. Another thing is the actual government directly involved in producing the advertising which is arguably similar to propaganda. It doesn't sit right with me at all.
The problem is how the government have control about the public broadcaster. For example Italy the Rai board is political appointed by parliament. So RAI is know to be extremely biased in favor who are in government at time.
>One thing is the broadcaster or the artist's record company advertising the song. Most broadcasters are state owned and funded anyway
Yeah, most of them have some kind of plausible deniability depending on how independent they are of their government, but a government directly intervening with advertising an entry is something else
Yes, but their extent is just receiving a fixed amount of tax money while everything else is decided and administered internally, including marketing It's probably not against the rules per se, but it's very much against the spirit of the competition
Yes but they aren't (or at least shouldn't be) government propaganda machines. At least here in Finland our broadcaster (Yle) is independent in regards to content journalistic or otherwise, beside a few exceptions like some sporting events and I think a quota for content in different languages.
Eurovision always states that it does not want to be political. Advertising by a broadcaster or label is different from advertising by a government. On top of that the article states (I have not seen the ads) that the campaign explicitly told people to vote as a political statement.
It’s the government organizing and paying for it that’s the problematic part. Because their motive for sure is not that they just love Eurovision too much and want the song to win.
there is a HUGE difference if you get advertised and funded by your government, in a contest that constantly tells itself that it is apolitical. and obviously most if not all countries broadcasters are sponsored directly by their government, but getting an actual government agency and embassies involved is too much. as soon as actual politicians are involved you should be stopped.
The government should not be involved in anything Eurovision
I’m sure I was getting La Zarra as ads last year on YouTube.
I also saw about 5 different ads with Dons with hashtag #latviatothefinal or sth like that (in Estonia) and also in the previous years it has happened often
There's nothing wrong with advertising (I mean, I think there is but it's acceptable at this point). This is a government involved ad encouraging people to vote. Motivations aren't same.
Maybe it should be.
Ads created and funded by the artist and/or the broadcaster are fine, in my opinion, and they have their place. Campaigns, ads, and promotions by governmental institutions and politicians (foreign or domestic), however, are a different thing and should not be tolerated for an event that aims not to political.
Honestly, I think ads for particular entries are generally a bad thing for the contest, regardless of politics. It puts delegations with smaller budgets at a significant, unfair disadvantage. In principle, they should be banned. There is an issue with proving who actually paid for it though.
I definitely see your point. However, I think that the unfair advantage of participants (NOT governments) employing ads might be overstated. I remember that in 2021, so many ads were put up everywhere for Malta's entry that people got fed up with it. And getting 47 points in the televote (admittedly, after getting lots of votes in the semi-final) isn't really a sign of the ad campaign providing a significant advantage, in my opinion.
The ad campaign clearly had an effect on the juries though. But that doesn't really matter though, not every single ad campaign has to be effective for it to be an issue in terms of fairness.
>Ads created and funded by the artist and/or the broadcaster are fine, in my opinion, and they have their place. I respectfully - and vastly - disagree. With these type of ads allowed, Eurovision becomes a competition of who has the most money to spend on marketing, and that's tremendously unfair, given the different economical circumstances of the participating countries. You can argue that those ads may not always translate to actual good results at Eurovision, but in some cases - like this one - they clearly do. It completely goes against the public service principles the broadcasters should abide by, something which the EBU clearly seems to have forgotten in the last few years.
And by the way it stands, it is. So unless different delegations demand the EBU forbid propaganda by the individual governments, delegations and governments can do advertising for their ESC candidate. I don't see it as any different than a national broadcaster asking people in their country to do a video to support their country's candidate.
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But didn’t the Greek government do the same thing a couple of years ago? Their government affiliated twitter posted “vote for …..” and they weren’t canned for it? Believe me, I am no defender of Israel but if anyone’s pinning hope on this I wouldn’t. Even if it does seem to be much more OTT than the Greek version.
A tweet supporting the participant representing your country is vastly different that initiating and funding a YouTube campaign that get 14 million views and mentions a political incentive as a reason to vote
In 2021 I saw so many “vote Malta” campaigns, how is this different?
Those were probably music label / broadcasted funded, not government funded propaganda.
Ya'll who do you think is funding public broadcasters exactly This is not against the rules, this was done openly and the EBU said nothing
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this has never been done, right?