Seven Reasons to Worry About Media Freedom in Israel - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi is entirely immersed in managing a public campaign. This time, it's not a campaign against the attorney general or a call for pilots to go to hell. In an attempt to garner supporters, perhaps in advance of the next Likud party primaries, Karhi has been endeavoring to project an image of himself as a reformer working for the benefit of the public and upholding free competition.
However, a look at the memorandum (a draft of a government bill) for the broadcasting law he released last week shows that Karhi is working in accordance with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s obsession with controlling the media.
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Despite the promises of a free market, it appears that what is behind the memorandum is an attempt to control public opinion, tighten the supervision of broadcasting organizations, control information and data and cause significance damage to creative work in Israel. These days, when the current coalition is interested in freeing itself from all restraints, the scenario in which the government will implement the law in an extreme way, causing harm to the media, is becoming a reasonable possibility.
Roy Folkman. According to the Folkman committee, in 2017 the commercial channels and platforms invested 522 million shekels, in 2018 they invested 436 million shekels and in 2019 only 395 million shekels.Credit: Moti Milrod
Indeed, parts of Karhi’s memorandum resemble the situation as it exists today, and parts even resemble the plan of his predecessor Yoaz Hendel, which was prepared after extensive work by the Folkman committee to deal with the future of local broadcasting. However, there are also sections in which Karhi takes political control to the extreme. There are many and complex provisions in the memorandum and it's already clear that some endanger the free media in Israel. Here are some of the most significant.
1. The regulator
The current situation: The two regulators currently responsible in the broadcasting market, on the basis of outdated laws that entail a great deal of involvement with the broadcasting organizations, are the Second Authority for Television and Radio, headed by Michelle Kremerman, and the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council, headed by Nir Shvili. In the media market, it is undisputed that this split and the regulatory involvement are damaging the market, but the two bodies are anyway considered weak. At the Second Authority there are now only 35 employees, in contrast to a previous 70. At the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council there are 17 civil servants, employed by the Communications Ministry. These employees don't know what their fate will be, but some have already become accustomed to threats of legislation that would shutter the organizations that employ them.
Head of the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council, Nir Shvili.Credit: Inbal Memeri / The Second Broadcasting Netweork
The proposed change: According to the memorandum, the two regulators will be shut down and a new body will be established – the Broadcast Media Authority. The new authority is conceived as an auxiliary unit in the Communications Ministry, which would be dependent on the ministry every step of the way. The board at the Authority is slated to be comprised of nine people (three civil servants and five representatives of the public). Two of the public representatives will be appointed directly by the communications minister and three additional members by a search committee consisting of representatives of the ministers of communications, education and justice. In this way, the politicians would enjoy a majority on the board.
The Broadcast Media Authority will be able to demand any and all information from the broadcasting organizations. It will also be given powers of supervision and administrative enforcement, including the possibility of imposing on the supervised organizations sanctions at the rate of up to 1 percent of their income – that is, fines that could amount to millions of shekels.
Why is this dangerous? Here is one scenario with a reasonable likelihood of happening: A major television channel decides to produce a series of programs investigating government activity, in which serious failures and also even suspicions of criminal activity are revealed. At a “random” moment and with no relation to the investigation of the government, the board, which is completely controlled by the ruling politicians, summons the channel for immediate clarification and threatens to slap it with a fine of millions of shekels for not conforming to the obligation to invest in local content. The channel understands the “signal” and takes the program off air.
Ziv Maor.Credit: Yair Dov
In effect, even today the regulatory bodies are controlled directly or indirectly by politicians, but instead of changing this in accordance with the recommendations of previous committees – as has been done at the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation, where the members of the board are selected by a search committee headed by a retired judge, for example – Karhi’s law exacerbates the politicization.
A clue to Karhi’s kind of appointment was seen recently when he brought up for authorization by the government the appointment of Ziv Maor as a member of the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council board. Maor, a Likud party member and presenter on Radio Galei Yisrael as well as a former investigator at the Kohelet Policy Forum, declared a personal relationship with Karhi after recommending him for second place in the Likud primaries.
2. Supervision of news broadcasts
The current situation: To establish a news company, a license and deposit guarantees of 3 million shekels are required. The company should be a separate legal entity from the channel, and 40 percent of the directorate is appointed by the state. This the legal situation at the large commercial channels today. However, Channel 14 has been handed easier conditions because it holds a different kind of license as a designated "micro-channel".
The second broadcast authority law includes a provision whereby broadcasting and news organizations are required to provide reliable and balanced broadcasts, without reflecting the positions of the channel’s owners. The law grants the Second Authority extensive power to supervise broadcast content, but in actuality this is exercised only in rare cases and fines are imposed mainly when the content is conisdered hurtful.
A protest outside the home of Channel 14 owner, Yitzchak Mirilashvili.Credit: Itay Ron
The proposed change: Though Karhi has been declaring repeatedly that the law eliminates regulation of broadcast organizations and gives them freedom of action, the memorandum includes an attempt to intervene in news content in the guise of a requirement to present a variety of opinions. “A news provider will provide accurate, reliable and balanced news content, which does not express the personal opinions of its owners and shareholders.” There is, however, a reservation in the explanatory material for the proposed law: “This provision is essentially of symbolic significance and is not expected to be subjected to enforcement by the authority.”
Why is this dangerous? Here is another reasonable scenario: On one of the television channels there is an especially biting commentator who regularly expresses sharp criticism of the government and who blames it for an economic crisis or even a grave security situation. The regulator believes that because of the obligation to balance broadcasts, alongside that analyst the channel must slot in a second analyst to disagree and present an opposite view. Such a move is a crude intervention in the journalistic considerations of the broadcast organization, and at least according to the current formulation of the memorandum, the regulator will be able intervene in broadcasts.
3. Local productions
The current situation: The local high-end productions market is already in a difficult spot in the wake of the gradual decrease in investments by commercial channels and platforms. According to the Folkman committee, in 2017 the commercial channels and platforms invested 522 million shekels, in 2018 they invested 436 million shekels and in 2019 only 395 million shekels.
There are no precise figures for investment since 2020, as the Second Authority and the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council have not yet published their reports for those years. Under the conditions of their licenses, channels Keshet 12 and Reshet 13 are required to invest 15 percent of their earnings in content of that sort and to devote 40 percent of their broadcast schedules to local content.
HOT and Yes are required to invest directly in high-end local Israeli productions for first broadcast or to purchase them at a rate of 8 percent at least. Partner and Cellcom, which entered the field of television broadcasts piggybacked on the internet, in recent years have been exempt from investing, as are the international giants Netflix and Disney.
A protest in Tel Aviv against a possible closure of the KAN public broadcaster.Credit: Hadas Parush
The proposed change: Karhi’s memorandum is aimed at setting a minimal threshold for investment, independent of whether the broadcasts are on cable, via satellite or over the internet. The significance of this was supposed to have been that Cellcom and Partner would also be obligated to invest in local content, but in actuality they remain outside the game because their earnings do not reach the required threshold (300 million shekels). Nor will Channel 14 be required to invest in original productions because, according to the estimates, it will not reach the minimal threshold established for investment by the commercial channels (180 million shekels).
Along with that, Karhi’s memorandum reduces the investment required today from the supervised organizations. HOT and Yes will invest only 4 percent in high-end productions (with no obligatory threshold for original productions that are not high-end, the way there has been until now), and an investment of 12 percent will be required of Keshet and Reshet. Another dangerous element is the elimination of the requirement to outsource a portion of the productions to external production companies. According to producers, this is a harsh blow to the Israeli production companies, some of which are already facing economic difficulties.
Why is this dangerous? Thousands of employees in the television and film industry are earning their living in local productions. Reducing the extent of investments in original content is liable not only to affect them but also to have a deleterious effect on the quality of Israeli content, which will be reflected onscreen in the long term in a situation in which there are many channels, a large portion of which are poorly funded.
4. The Kan Public Broadcasting Corporation
The current situation: The broadcasting corporation law stipulates a clear barrier between the political establishment and journalists and prevents political influence on the corporation by means of having a special search committee headed by a retired judge select the board of the corporation. The corporation’s earnings currently amount to about 750 million shekels annually, some of this from sales of content. The corporation distributes all of its content in accordance with demand, with no restrictions and gratis – on YouTube, on its website and on the Kan Box app.
However, with regard to commercial broadcast organizations like Netflix, HOT and Yes, the public broadcaster is not currently providing them with its VOD content for free, but rather conducts commercial negotiations with them. Currently, for example, the corporation is in such talks with FreeTV. The money that comes in from content sales serves the corporation for producing additional content for viewers.
The Kan broadcasting offices in Jerusalem.Credit: Shai Epstein
The proposed change: The memorandum proposes authorizing the communications minister to demand of the corporation all information the minister needs for exercising his authority under the law. In addition, the corporation will be required to provide its content, including VOD content, to commercial broadcast organizations as well, and it will be forbidden to run commercials in its radio broadcasts.
Why is this dangerous? The public broadcasting organization was established in a way intended to maintain separation between it and the political establishment. Under the new memorandum, in a not unlikely scenario in which the corporation’s content is displeasing to the government, Karhi will have direct access to supervising it and is liable to demand irrelevant information with the aim of damaging the corporation and undermining its public standing. Karhi, it must be recalled, has already repeatedly declared in the past his intention to bring about the closure of the public broadcasting corporation.
Moreover, if the proposal to oblige the corporation to give away its content gratis to commercial organizations passes, it will enable them to expand their content libraries and increase their profits at the expense of the public, while public broadcasting loses earnings. The corporation would lose about 100 million shekels a year if it is prohibited from broadcasting commercials on its radio stations.
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, left, and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the Knesset in April.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
5. Control of ratings
The current situation: As things stand now, the Israeli Audience Research Board is the body responsible for ratings. It is an organization controlled mainly by broadcast channels, advertising agencies and advertisers. The ratings figures are important mainly for the commercial broadcasting organizations, because they are used for setting the prices for commercials.
The proposed change: The memorandum gives the new Broadcast Media Authority power to demand of the broadcast organizations that they provide viewership data, and also to collect information from the organizations on a regular basis, inter alia by means of permanent interface in their editorial boards. The new authority will also be able, under the memorandum, to process the data using accepted statistical methods.
Why is this dangerous? The new broadcast media authority, which as noted would be directly controlled by politicians in power, will be able to determine the methods of measuring viewership data in Israel. Inter alia, it will be able to adopt a data processing method that will bias the ratings picture in favor of channels supportive of the government. These figures are of great importance because of the “network effect:” People tend to watch content that many others are watching.
6. Idan Plus
The current situation: The Idan Plus law for nearly costless access to a limited number of channels in Israel obligates the commercial channels to pay distribution fees of millions of shekels to the Second Authority, but Channel 14 refuses to pay the distribution fee and therefore it is not broadcast today on Idan Plus. Initially, for a period of about 18 months, the channel’s broadcasts were distributed for free – at the state’s expense – and afterwards a price of about 2 million shekels a year was set.
Last year, the Second Authority informed the channel that it would stop being broadcast in the wake of a debt of about 6.5 million shekels to the Second Authority, which the channel had accumulated for the distribution fees. This sum joined the sum of 12.2 million shekels Channel 14 owed to the Second Authority, for non-compliance with the conditions of its license.
Recently, the Ministerial Committee on Legislation approved a proposed private member’s law decreasing the distribution fees for the "micro-channels" from 2 million shekels a year to only 15,000 shekels a year. The proposal is relevant to Channel 14 only, as it is the only micro-channel that was broadcast on Idan Plus until it was discontinued. Moreover, the proposal prohibits the Second Authority from preventing channels that have debts from broadcasting on Idan Plus.
The proposed change: Karhi is proposing that the new authority develop an app for providing content, which would also distribute it to the public. The sum to be paid by the broadcasting organizations in return for distribution of its broadcasts b the authority will be determined by the communications and finance ministers.
Why is this dangerous? When it comes the an internet app, this seems to constitute harm to the private property of the broadcast organizations, which currently enjoy earnings from activity on the internet and the apps they own. The government is essentially confiscating from them the right to earn profits from broadcasts on the internet and is itself making this content available to the public. In a situation in which there is ostensibly unlimited competition and the state is not regulating the field, the permission given to the state to take the channels’ content and broadcast it for free is liable to damage the existing broadcasting organizations’ model of earnings from advertising and subscriptions.
7. The radio market
The current situation: The national radio stations are now under public ownership only – Army Radio and the Broadcasting Corporations stations. The private radio market is made up of local regional stations only, and it there are some individuals who hold local radio stations in a number of different regions. Among them are Eli Azur, David Ben-Bassat and Tzvika Shalom. The radio market today is considered to be stable and profitable. The strongest elements in it have direct influence on the political establishment, and often have a direct relationship with politicians.
Ben-Bassat, for example, who was formerly a Likud member and is now associated with all factions in the Knesset, easily advances legislation beneficial to himself and to regional radio. Shalom owns Radio Galei Yisrael, which hosts a number of pro-Netanyahu commentators as well as a radio show by the prime minister's son Yair.
The proposed change: Karhi wants to transform the local stations into national stations, and at the same time prohibit the Broadcasting Corporation from running commercials on its radio stations. After threatening to take the broadcasting frequencies away from the public broadcasting corporation, Karhi announced that a technological solution has been found to enable the addition of national radio stations and opening them to the broader market.
Why is this dangerous? Transforming local radio into national radio could be a positive step that would increase competition, but it has two caveats. First of all, the significance is damage to the model of regional radio and its ability to bring in money from advertising. Stations that choose to remain local rather than national will discover that they are all alone in a shrinking market. Secondly, there is a not unreasonable concern that in dividing up the national frequencies, preference will be given to pro-government radio stations, particularly Galei Yisrael.