ladaat  

Israel's Electronic broadcasting:
Reporting or Managing the News ?

by

Yisrael Medad & Prof.  Eli Pollak
Israel’s Media Watch

"The Israel Broadcasting Authority’s obligations as a quasi-governmental institution include: objectivity, prevention of the politicization of the Authority, fairness, equality, no conflict of interests, and integrity in its decisions". Aaron Barak, President of Israel’s Supreme Court, Speech, May 13, 1996.

"Who says that the media is something sacred?": Shimon Peres, former Prime Minister, "Popolitika" TV Program, July 27, 1998

1.  Introduction - 2.  Israel’s Broadcast Media - An Overview
3. The Ideological Identity and Credibility of Israel’s Media
4. The Media Treatment of the Oslo Process
5. Rabin’s Assassination and the following Week as Reflected in Channel One’s TV Broadcasts
6. The Israeli Broadcast Media During the 1996 Election Campaign
7. Imbalance in the Israel Broadcasting Authority’s Programs
8. Conclusion
9. References - Selected Bibliography of Works Consulted - Notes


 3.  The Ideological Identity and Credibility of Israel’s Media

In an article which appeared in The Seventh Eye, the bimonthly magazine
devoted to media criticism, edited by Ha’Aretz columnist Uzi Benzamin and
published by the Israel Democracy Institute, Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s
leading newspapermen, related to the matter of the character identity of
Israel’s media in the aftermath of the 1996 elections:

"It is doubtful whether the majority of the journalists were to be
considered ‘with Peres’, but for sure they were anti-Netanyahu...
Netanyahu had to overcome a hostile media"  (5)

This realization that, as Barnea further pointed out, that "Netanyahu was
forced to deal with two fronts - against the Labor Party and against the
media", stems from an open secret and that is that the overwhelming
majority of journalists, reporters, editors, interviewers, radio and TV
talk show hosts as well as broadcasting directors and producers can be
defined, in Israeli terms, as "leftist".
This definition includes the adoption of political, economic, social and
religious viewpoints that place them within the leftist camp.

This camp was delineated by Chanoch Marmari, editor of the prestigious
liberal Ha’Aretz:

"We, the people who populate the printed and electronic media, belong to a
small, elitist, well-off, urban and secular group.  The press...tends
naturally
to lean towards those political elements that express and fulfill these
positions,
most of them within the sphere of the Labor-Meretz parties.  The media
followed with support and even enthusiasm the peace process...it was not
difficult
to distinguish the natural bias of many media personnel towards the
political
left and an almost fully comprehensible sympathy in favor of the peace
makers -
Rabin and Peres"  (6)

The apprehension that the electronic media would unfairly intervene in the
1996 election campaign caused a group of leading intellectuals and literary
figures, from the full spectrum of Israeli political opinion, to publish a
newspaper advertisement on both May 1 and 2 in the three main dailies.
The ad, entitled "Out of Concern for Israel’s Democratic Character", (7)
called upon Israel’s media professionals "to place the obligation to
democracy and political fair play above your personal inclinations for this
or that side.  Journalists must draw a clear line between their right to
express their opinions in op-ed columns and between their tasks as news
editors and interviewers".  The ad, as expected, stirred up public
controversy regarding the ideological identity of media personnel in Israel.

On May 2, 1996, Shelly Yechimovitz, broadcasting on her Kol Yisrael’s
Reshet Bet station interview program, forthrightly stated that "let’s be
open about it for a moment, and admit to the simple fact that most of the
media persons in Israel are leftists.  Left?  They either vote Labor or
Meretz".  Her guest, then IBA Director-General, Mordechai Kirschenbaum,
reacted and said, "I don’t want to deal in statistics.  I am not sure that
in the IBA, throughout its stations, that that is the situation.  But it is
true that most of the journalists, not only here but most newspeople
throughout the Western world are very liberal people.  They are people who
are very liberal, and avant-garde and open-minded and due to this, it is
quite possible that there are perceived as being identified as being Left".

Ms. Yechimovitz, one of the media’s outstanding personalities (8) has
constantly been outspoken on this matter with no guilt feelings.  In an
interview with Oshrat Kotler of the Second Authority (9), Yechimovitz was
adamant on the leftist orientation of the Israel media:

"...I also do not believe in objectivity.  This is a hypocritical and
mendacious
term...(and concerning) this claim that ‘the media is leftist’...the time
has come
to admit to the facts - the media is indeed leftist.  Place a ballot box
in any
media office and the results will be clear: from center to the left. 
The press dialogue in Israel is not a public dialogue and the alienation
that
exists between the public and the media reaches new heights every day.
There is total lack of confidence...and it’s true...the sole solution to this
alienation is the entry of right-wing journalists into the media.
"The mobilization of the media in 1992 in favor of the election of Rabin
was an unprofessional mobilization, clearly.  The ‘Operation Grapes of
Wrath’ for example, that problematic campaign, did not receive the
criticism due it because Shimon Peres was Prime Minister at the time".

During a discussion evening open to the public hosted by the Van Leer
Institute in Jerusalem on January 11, 1996, Hebrew University’s Professor
Ehud Sprinzak, a noted observer of Israel’s right-wing politics, confirmed
that the claims that Israel’s media was hostile to the rightist camp were
basically correct.  According to his interpretation, this hostility stemmed
from the culture weltanschauung of the media personnel more than any
strictly  political bias.

After the elections, Ha’Aretz political reporter Orit Galili, was a guest
on the media critique program "No Man’s Land" that was devoted to analyzing
the media’s performance during the elections.  Asked to comment, Galili said:

"The press was completely mobilized on behalf of Peres, absolutely so...I
feel personally a professional failure and I think that the failure was
collective... the milieu of the regime and the journalists together, and
with the campaign
managers, when they all rubbed shoulders one with another, and each feeding
off the other, [led] in the end one could see what was in the guts of the
people.
The preference of the media was for Peres...the solution is more limits, more
criticism, more listening." (10)

On that same program in the following year, the political commentator of
Ma’ariv,
Menachem Chami Shalev, admitted that "it was no secret that most of the
journalists did not support Netanyahu". (11)

The prime example of a media person combining his ideological leanings and
his professional work is Aharon Goldfinger, the former producer of the
"Popolitika" program, the central current affairs show on Channel One.
Upon the conclusion of the broadcast of the program on November 6, 1995,
two days after the assassination of Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin,
Goldfinger declared "I will pursue them, the Likud, and you can even quote
me on that". (12)  In rising anger at the way the regular panel members
performed in not attacking the Likud aggressively, he shouted at them that
as long as he was producer of Popolitika, no program under his supervision
would allow the right-wing to win. (13)

It was, ironically, Shimon Peres, in a televised interview, who expressed
the general exasperation of many politicians, both left and right, at the
lack of media credibility.  In response to a report by the senior
commentator of TV’s Channel One, Amnon Avramovitz, Peres retorted:

"Who says that this material is at all reliable?  And I tell you, the time
has
come for the press to step down off its pedestal of ‘faked martyrdom’ and
become responsible for what it reports.  This is a calamity what they are
doing". (14)

Public Opinion vis-a-vis the Media

A poll conducted by the Geocartographia Institute, at the behest of the a
local news weekly (15), amongst a representative selection of 620
interviewees, responded to questions dealing with the political leanings of
the television media personnel of both channels.  The results were as follows:

a)   Mabat - 28% - neutral; 33% - leftist; 8% - rightist.
b)   Hadashot - 41% neutral; 19% - rightist; 9% - leftist.


Another poll, this time from the Gallop Organization, was commissioned by
IMW, showed that, like the previous one, that most Israelis consider their
media to be leftist.  Carried out on June 6, 1996 amongst 505 interviewees
of the adult Jewish population, the replies were very informative.

Asked "did the electronic media prove itself objective during the
election?", 50% said no; 39% said yes; 11% had no opinion.  Of those who
believed the media was not objective, 74% believed they favored the
left-wing; 6% thought they favored the right-wing and 8% had no opinion.  A
third question was asked about reporters involving their own political
outlooks in their work.   Twenty-six per cent said to a large degree; 44%
said yes; 18% responded no; 4% said not all and 8% had no opinion.  They
were also queried whether they would support, given the nature of
electronic media as a public network, a private media company broadcasting
news programs.  Sixty-six per cent said yes; 22% opposed and 12% had no
opinion.

Dr. Yaakov Katz, director of the Community Research Institute of Bar-Ilan
University, the sole pollster to predict exactly the nature of Netanyahu’s
election victory, published results of a survey collected in December 1996.
Asked if Israel’s mass media networks relate in an objective fashion to
the activities of the Netanyahu government, 77% replied in the negative and
17% in the positive.  The representative sampling was 1250, a
larger-than-usual number.  Another survey published in the summer of 1996,
the results of which were broadcast on the "Another Matter" current affairs
program on Kol Yisrael, showed that despite the fact that while some 90% of
the populace believes that the mass media is necessary, 50% consider the
media to be leftist, unfair and that its freedom should be restricted in
some fashion.

Yet another poll whose findings were broadcast on that same program on
January 16, 1997 indicated that while a majority consider the electronic
media to be more reliable than the written press, 83% of those polled
thought that the media should limit itself to simply reflecting reality by
reporting the news and not be engaged in criticism.  The television
received the highest rating of media instruments that influence, 78%, but
nevertheless, only 38% were of the opinion that its reports were credible.

A Gallup poll taken amongst a sampling of 497 persons from the adult
Jewish population (16) asked "to what degree you have trust in the
following institutions?".  The media ended up in last place following the
IDF, the Supreme Court, the police and the Knesset.  The specific breakdown
was:
13% - full trust; 16% - trust; 40% - certain trust; 14% - little trust; 15%
- no trust and 2% with no opinion.  On that same theme, the "Peace Index
Project", conducted by the Tami Steinmetz Center
for Peace Research at Tel  Aviv University, released data on its own poll
on the public’s trust in state institutions (17).  The findings, supervised
by Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Dr. Tamar Hermann and executed by Modiin Ezrahi,
indicated that whereas the court system received a 78% rating and the
police 70%, the media received only 53%.  In a previous "Peace Index"
survey published in August 1996, the media received but 49% of the public’s
trust.

Orit Shochat, a political commentator for the Ha’Aretz daily, published an
article which confirmed that leftists themselves are quite well aware of
the general perception identifying the public broadcasting system with
left-wing ideology.  She wrote, in part:

"Every time the right achieves power, it is dismayed to discover that
the reporters, the news presenters and the talk show hosts remain in
the Left...the problem is that even after they privatize [the IBA], the
majority of the media will remain leftist in spirit.  Journalists, directors,
satirists, producers, show hosts and broadcasters in Israel and the world,
in public as well as commercial networks, tend to position themselves
to the left of the political map".

And Shochat adds:

"this is a sociological fact" (18)

Ron Meiberg, writing about the period of Summer-Fall 1996, provides the
source for the public’s opinion that Israel’s mass media is left:
"As journalists and as opinionated people, we never were so mobilized to
bring down the Prime Minister and to hold up for show his idiotic behavior.
In the meantime, this hasn’t turned out the way we wanted, and the public
is not displaying any love for us".  (19)

Meiberg, along with his companion columnist, Amnon Dankner, pointed out
another instance of the sympathetic attitude shown to fellow leftists,
unlike their relationship with anyone from the right:

"The charge sheet brought against Shimon Sheves, who served as the country’s
boss [in his position as Director-General of Prime Minster Rabin’s office]
before we loved to hate Evette Liberman [the former D-G of Netanyahu’s
office],
carries on his back not a little of the feeling [about regime
corruption].  That
the media, being just slightly left (joke), reports on Sheves as if we
are referring
to a medical bulletin on a survey made about a drug to heal diabetes, is
doing
a great favor to the Labor Party".  (20)


The Media’s Style and Its Influence on Its Credibility

In an article published in a media periodical, Dr. Dan Boneh defined
Israel’s media as a "communicatator" and spelled out his criticism:

"Indeed, the communicatator in all its finery - or, if you wish, a media
gone
mad, a media gone dizzy in gorgeous feathers, which crowns itself and takes
credit for all sorts of achievements that are but losses - its influence
on its
viewers and public opinion being destructive, negative and insulting.
Instead
of  ‘democracy’s watchdog’, guarding ‘the public’s right to know’, we have
a despotic media which encourages shallowness and populism, simplicity and
extremism, an atmosphere of shouting and violence.  All this hampers the
ability of the public to clarify and know, to consider and think, to
uncover and
receive information, not because the public in uninterested, but that the
communicatator is not interested in allowing it to do so".  (21)

Yizhar Smilansky, outstanding author and prize-winner, , also felt
pressured to relate to Israel’s media style.  In an op-ed piece (22), the
former Labor MK found an original way to express his repulsion and called
out: "People!  Don’t Go to the Television!".  His forthright criticism
included the following literary gems:

"They will invite you there so as to shut you up.  They will mock you,
they will torment you...all the interviewer needs is one sentence...and
after you have uttered it, your job is finished.  And if you stammer on
or attempt to clarify or, God forbid, suggest another direction, you’ll be
tossed out immediately, thank you.  You’re despised and out...they’ll
obliterate you before you take a breath before speaking; you’re despised
before you begin and if you do not utter the line they expect you to say,
they’ll turn you into stupid fools".

As if in support of Smilansky’s view, Yaakov Achimeir, veteran IBA
reporter and news presenter, published conclusions about his experience as
Channel One’s Washington correspondent during 1995-1997:

"here in Israel, the screen serves as a ring where pure poor taste is
defended...
by us, interviewers act with roughshod antagonism...[doing so] so as to
please the circle of friends and those who share their political and social
outlook". (23)



The Public’s Representatives vs. The Professional Staff

One of the major elements which underlay the workings of a public
broadcasting networks the existing tension between the professional staff,
who are daily involved in the production and transmission of hundreds of
weekly hours of programming, and those persons appointed to perform the
function of the public’s representatives.  Galatz, the Army Radio station,
and the Educational Television network are supervised directly by the
relevant ministries rather than any public council. The Second Authority
Law stipulated the existence of a public council but the authors of this
report were unable to review accessible primary documentation.  The
situation at the IBA is different.

In the IBA’s Plenum Report covering the period October 1995-October 1996 a
whole section is devoted to this tension.  Professor Rina Shapira writes
there that this matter is an in-built dilemma which stems from the
definition of the IBA as a public institution.  According to Shapira,


"[there exist] two essential difficulties regarding the role fulfillment
of the
executive committee, both interrelated:  the first is the political
make-up of
the committee and the second is the interpretation of the committee’s role
as administrator or setting of policy of the authority [by the
authority’s own
employees]".  (24)

Further in the report, Shapira describes a complex and confrontational
relationship between the senior professional employees of the IBA and the
public representative.  Beyond the claim of guilt by "political"
association, Prof. Shapira notes that not only were ethical code standards
violated but that proper and correct administrative and managerial aspects
of the IBA’s work were not carried out.
Reading the report, as well as the items in the press published by media
critics, one gains the impression that the senior directors depreciate all
criticism by labeling it as "political interference", enabling them to
cover up failures of management, financial and organizational.  Shapira
sums up and points out that "the blur that exists in the IBA Law
[regarding] questions of authority and responsibility over the various
bodies made our work difficult".  (25)

A recent incident well illustrates the complexity of this nebulous
formulation of responsibility.  For over two decades there has existed an
informal understanding, confirmed in the minutes of plenum meetings of that
period, that there is a status quo whereby the IBA plenum defines broad
policy decisions and operational guidelines.  The professional staff,
however, is solely responsible for matters relating to editorial decisions,
management concerns and personnel appointments.  The plenum, it is
understood, does not deal in removing a news presenter nor does it dictate
who will host a specific show.

However, when Kol Yisrael’s director, Amnon Nadav, decided during July
1998 to alter the structure of a weekly program devoted to legal and
judicial affairs, as well as replacing the presenter, the person in
question, Moshe Negbi, appealed to the Jerusalem District Labor Court.  He
claimed that according to the law, the only institution that has the right
to alter his standing is the plenum; not the radio’s director.  The judge
concurred and as of this writing, the appeal judgment has not been handed
down.  But be that as it may, the status quo had been dearly adhered to by
left wing politicians who had successfully sought to ward off various
attempts by representatives of the nationalist camp politicians to fire or
transfer veteran IBA employees with whose style and content they did not
agree.
Now, to avoid being removed, Negbi, a radical liberal whose personal
newspaper columns do not hide his political and social outlook, was willing
to overturn  the decades-old standoff which, also, is in contradiction to
several decisions of the High Court of Justice (26).  All this has been a
further major contribution to the blurring of the lines between the IBA’s
plenum members and the persons they are bound by law to supervise.

In another sphere, one of the problems that prevent the managers of the
Arutz 7 national radio station from accepting the offer to enter into the
Second Authority’s regional radio setup is their fear of the extent of the
authority’s supervisory powers.  The Arutz 7 managers are concerned that in
the guise of administrative restrictions that their right of expression
would be severely curtailed.  As a result, the station prefers to spend
some one million dollars annually on the upkeep of an off-shore ship as
well as broadcasting over an unofficially obtained frequency rather than
submit themselves to the proffered arrangement.  This lack of trust is an
additional symptom in the charged atmosphere existing between the
broadcasting bodies and the supervisory institutions responsible for
maintaining
ethical standards as set out by law and secondary legislation.
  

IMW is a registered non-profit organization whose major aim is assuring the ethical and fair conduct of the Israeli media.

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