Published: 12 September 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Netanyahu has long manipulated the media, but the proposed communications law will subject the media to unprecedented political influence, writes NURIT CANETTI.
Israel’s free and independent media is threatened by a proposed new law that will change how the country’s communications market functions.
August 21 was the deadline for the public to submit objections to the Ministry of Communications' proposals. Civil organisations representing different professional sectors of the industry — journalists, producers, creators, TV channels, and others — hurried to submit documents filled with logical and legal explanations as to why the proposed law would harm free media and enable political control over journalists and broadcasters.
The rating committee wrote that "Israel will be the only country, with Russia, where the government is involved in collecting viewer data." Television channels warned that the news would be controlled by the government. The Journalists Association (whose chair is the author of this piece) stated that the law would weaken the public broadcasting corporation economically and politicise the regulation of broadcasting. There were also objections that the proposed law would abolish the mandatory separation between commercial broadcasting and news, and allow broadcasting news without a licence.
However, don’t hold your breath, almost certainly, most of the objections will be rejected. In the Israeli media, there's no doubt that Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi's proposed law, which is complex and lengthy, is intended to sow chaos in the broadcast industry, weaken strong players, and subject communications systems to political influence.
In parallel with the weakening of public and commercial broadcasting systems, the proposed law provides economic benefits to Channel 14, considered "Netanyahu's home channel," and owned by the oligarch, Georgian-Israeli businessman Yitzhak Mirilashvili, co-founder of the largest social network in Russia, VK.
Channel 14 was established as a channel focused on "Israel's heritage", but then it was granted the right to broadcast news. It now features a news department with reporters, a daily news program, and various shows that host figures strongly aligned with Netanyahu and his party. This is likely the reason Netanyahu, who rarely grants interviews to the Israeli media (though he has given more than 20 interviews in recent months to the American media) chooses Channel 14 for any local interviews.
