Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara sent an opinion today to Minster of Justice Yariv Levin opposing the bill to privatize the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation, which broadcasts as Kan, and painting a dark picture of the bill’s consequences for the communications market. The bill, drafted by MK Tally Gotliv (Likud) and promoted by Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi, was approved today by the ministerial legislation committee, which Levin chairs.
Under the bill, the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation will be shut down within two years. The law that governed it activity will be repealed. The Second Authority for Television and Radio will publish a tender to select a licensee for television broadcasts on the channels which the Public Broadcasting Corporation uses. If a winner is chosen, it will be licensed for private, commercial broadcasting. If no winner is chosen, “the Public Broadcasting Corporation will cease to broadcast and will cease all activity connected to broadcasting within two years of this law coming into force.” The bill proposes the same treatment for the Public Broadcasting Corporation’s radio broadcasts, and a tender will be held for the Corporation’s Reshet Bet news and current affairs station with the aim of privatizing it.
“Full, absolute abolition of public broadcasting in Israel
The legal opinion, written by Adv. Avital Sompolinsky, Deputy Attorney general for public and constitutional law, and Adv. Meir Levin, Deputy Attorney General for economic law, states, “The immediate significance of the bill is the full and absolute abolition of public broadcasting in Israel and a fundamental change in the Israeli communications map. A decision cannot be made to erase from the communications field a main platform for expression hastily, in a private member’s bill, with no professional basis, and contrary to the way in which the government has acted on this matter in the past. This is a matter of great public importance, which up to now has been examined as part of government staff work that included the activity of a series of public committees appointed by the government to examine the matter.”
The Attorney General’s representatives point to the link between Gotliv’s bill and other moves promoted by the government, and conclude: “The suspicion arises that at the basis of the bill lies the desire to end the Corporation’s broadcasts because of their content.”
The government has recently promoted private member’s bills from Likud Knesset members designed to restrict freedom of the press. A bill proposed by MK Avihai Boaron seeks to enable the government to cut the Public Broadcasting Corporation’s budget dramatically, while a bill proposed by MK Shalom Danino is intended to put the measurement of television viewer ratings under government control. Karhi has refused to extend the terms of two members of the board of the Corporation, which has in effect paralyzed the work of the board.
The Attorney General’s opinion state sin this context that “even if the various measures ultimately do not materialize, they have a substantial and severe chilling effect on the Corporation and other communications organizations in Israel, each of them by itself, and certainly cumulatively.”
“The message to the communications market is clear, that criticism of the government or the broadcasting of content that the government does not like is liable to lead to steps against communications organizations and to restrict them with instant measures, with no staff work, through the promotion of private members’ bills,” the opinion states.
Contrary to the messages that the minister of communications keeps repeating, that the measures he is promoting are designed to increase competition and variety in the industry, the opinion states, “Ending the news and current affairs broadcasts of the Corporation has a clearly negative effect on the range of opinion in the Israeli marketplace of ideas,” and that the bill will cause substantia harm to freedom of expression and of the press.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on November 24, 2024.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.
