1.  IMW Submits Complaint to Police Against Radio Censorship Israel's Media Watch submitted a criminal complaint against three employees of Reshet Aleph (Channel A) of Israel Radio: Director Eitan Almog, and broadcasters Judy Lutz and Elihu Ben-On.  IMW claims that they prevented call-in listeners from raising the issue of the police raid of Arutz-7 almost three weeks ago, thus violating the Broadcasting Authority law. "Israel Radio is not private property, but rather belongs to the public, and its employees must not censor callers," claims IMW.

In its complaint, IMW quoted Lutz as telling a caller-in that the topic of the police raid was off-limits.  IMW insists that this was an act of censorship and of curtailing a fundamental right to freedom of expression.  The IBA Law makes it clear that all opinions and outlooks currently held by the public must find representation in the IBA broadcasts.

2.   New Date Set for High Court Petition Hearing
IMW has submitted its supplemental petition to the High Court, including new material from police interrogations in 1995, 1996 and 1998, albeit partial, as well as a copy of the supposedly unedited film from the swearing-in ceremony (the "out-takes"). The oral arguments will be heard on February 14.

3.   IMW Reps in Knesset Committee Hearings
IMW reps were invited to participate in four recent hearings in the Knesset. The first was in the matter of violence and sex in TV commercials.  The second session was devoted to the complaints by local radio stations against the terms of the tenders whereby Kol Yisrael maintains an unfair advantage. The third was called to discuss the decision by Eitan Almog to prohibit current political affairs from the news round-up discussion program in the framwork of the Morasha religious affairs programming schedule on Programme A of Kol Yisrael radio.  These three were all deliberated in the Education Committee. A fourth session, in the Economic Committee, dealt with amendments to the Consumer Protection Law.  IMW suggested a text, adopted by the committee with minor modifications, to prohibit a possible conflict of interest when a journalist promotes commercial ventures. The law will now ban any act of deceit on the journalist's behalf if he seeks to use his reputation to sell any product.

4.  IMW Seeks Halt to Use of US Anthem
Recalling that IMW was prohibited from using the national anthem as background music, when it sought to air a spot just prior to the elections focused on Mobilized Media, IMW has demanded from the IBA legal advisor, Chana Metkevitcz, that she prohibit the use of the American anthem in an ad now being broadcast for AIG, an insurance company. IMW wrote to Metzkevicz that just as she held that it was bad taste to use the anthem then, so too must the same argument be used.

-  Help needed

We still need all the help we can get. IMW needs monitors, listeners and recorders to follow the Golan/Syrian Negotiation coverage.  If you can commit yourself to at least on program, call the office or post an e-mail.
We're looking for imbalance, lack of diversity in commentary, expressions of personal opinion, unfair interview techniques, slanted reporting, etc.

Reminder!
You may hear Rami Sadan and Yisrael Medad discussing media issues on their popular radio program "Chofesh HaShidur" (The Freedom of Broadcasting) on Arutz 7, Sunday mornings live! between 8-9AM.

EYE ON THE MEDIA: The journalist as parrot
By
David Bar-Illan
The Jerusalem Post - January 14, 2000
(An excerpt)

"The numbers game "

Last Monday's demonstration against withdrawal from the Golan revealed yet again how even reports on numbers of protesters can be manipulated.

The police estimated the number at 150,000, which is what the three major Hebrew newspapers reported. But the English edition of Ha'aretz, perhaps concerned that foreign readers would be too impressed by the intensity of Israeli resistance to withdrawal, headlined the story "Golan rally draws tens of thousands." And its picture caption gleefully stated: "The rally organizers predicted it would be the biggest demonstration in Israeli history, but only an estimated 150,000 protesters braved cold, wet weather."

Ironically, the International Herald Tribune, which distributes the English Ha'aretz as a supplement, had its own picture. Its caption read: "Hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrating in Tel Aviv...."

The Boston Globe's headline had the number at 200,000, while its picture caption read: "More than 100,000." The Jerusalem Post, splitting the difference between the organizers' exaggerated claim of half a million and the understated police estimate, had the number at 250,000.

The New York Times, obviously straining to belittle the numbers (after all, the demonstrators actually dared go against the Times's editorial policy!) put the number at 100,000. Its correspondent Deborah Sontag, who turned in a decidedly understated description of the rally - which even leftist Israeli reporters gushed over - proved that journalists, too, can be victims of media distortions that have become conventional wisdom.
"Organizers were aiming for a crowd to rival the 400,000 Israelis who turned out to protest Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. But they fell short of their goal," she wrote.

As engineers proved soon after that demonstration, Rabin Square plus all the surrounding streets cannot accommodate 400,000 people even if every demonstrator carried two others piggyback. The 1982 figure, disseminated by journalists eager to bring down the Begin-Sharon government, would have meant that one tenth of the whole Israeli population was at the square. A wild exaggeration.

The only sensible approach to such number games was taken by Yediot Aharonot's Nahum Barnea. "Hair-splitting over numbers is futile: The demonstration was one of the most impressive in the square's history. It impressed not only in numbers, but in the demonstrators' self-discipline," he wrote.

Further on he remarked: "Barak can find plenty of solace, from various sources, but he should not repress the facts." Nor should journalists

Media News

We present an expanded Media News section reflecting the global issues involved in a variety of instances where the media comes under critcism.

a) US media accused of gun control bias
(While the issue of gun control is irrelevant to Israel, we found the study itself as an interesting phenomenon, strenghtening IMW's research.)

The television networks in the US are so badly slanting the gun control debate they have become the ''communications division of the anti-gun lobby,'' says the head of a conservative media watchdog group that studied the issue.

The Media Research Center released a study Wednesday on two years of television news stories on gun control. The study analysed shows and newscasts between July 1, 1997 and June 30, 1999 on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC. In many cases, the study claimed, pro-gun themes were not covered and gun proponents were not given air time. The group says it examined 653 news stories on gun policy issues and found that stories advocating more gun control outnumbered stories opposing gun control 357 to 36.

''There's a powerful pervasive bias in the media,'' said Oliver North, the former Iran-Contra figure who now hosts a political talk show on MSNBC and is a national board member of the National Rifle Association. ''This blitz of bias is having an extraordinary impact on public policy and legal opinion.''

CNN spokesman David Bittler defended its reporting saying, ''We do not advocate for or against any particular position and we stand behind the balance and fairness that goes into all our reporting.'' The issue of guns has increasingly been in the news as the US has grappled with school shootings. Naomi Paiss, spokeswoman for Handgun Control, said the complaints were unfounded. ''This is clearly the comedy press conference with which to start off the new year.'' 

b) an example of manipulation of the media through technology.
IMW has on file a similar case when Channel One TV news in July 1995 showed Benny Katzover smoking a cigarette.  The film was shot in reverse to increase the ugliness of Katzover's grimace as he pulled on the cigarette and the smoke entered his eyes.

NATO under fire for misleading videos

NATO showed videos of the bombing of a passenger train on a bridge in Yugoslavia last spring at three times the normal speed, bolstering the impression that the fatal attack was unavoidable, a German newspaper reported Thursday.
The two videos were made from cameras in the heads of guided missiles as they bore down on the railway bridge near the Serb town of Grdelicka on April 12, the Frankfurter Rundschau said.

A train crossing the bridge was hit, killing at least 14 people. It was one of several incidents of NATO bombs going astray or hitting misidentified targets during the fighting over Kosovo. NATO officials said at the time that the train appeared on the bridge so fast that there was not time to redirect the missiles. The videos were shown to support that position.

Lt. Col. Mike Philips, a spokesman for NATO's military headquarters in Brussels, said NATO became aware of the problem with the videos for the first time in October and started a detailed check. The problem ''was due to a technical error in the software of the computer system used by intelligence analysts'', he said.

Mr Philips said the video error ''in no way changes the facts as presented at the press conference'' at NATO headquarters in April. ''The pilot acted in good faith and was unable to divert his weapon when the train appeared on his video screen,'' he said.

c)  another media ethical issue - this time the use of digital technology:

US row as network alters news pictures

One of America's main television networks, CBS, has come in for a storm of criticism after it was revealed that the company tampered with news footage broadcast on New Year's Eve, using digital technology to erase the logo of a rival network.

CBS's live millennium broadcast from Times Square in New York showed its main presenter, Dan Rather, standing in front of a large billboard flashing his network's symbol to millions of viewers. But anyone actually in the square that night would have seen that the billboard actually carried the NBC logo.

In an interview yesterday, Mr Rather said: ''There is no excuse for it. I did not grasp the possible ethical implications of this, and that was wrong on my part.'' But Leslie Moonves, CBS TV's president, insisted: ''Any time there's an NBC logo up on our network, we'll block it again.''

Some ethical experts, however, consider it a serious issue. ''This may seem like an innocent little corporate coup, but there are bigger implications in terms of eroding people's confidence in what they see on the screen,'' said Richard Kaplar, vice president of The Media Institute, a communications think tank in Washington.

Digital manipulation has caused problems for the media before. Time magazine apologised to readers in 1994 for featuring a darkened version of O.J. Simpson's face on its cover. ABC similarly acknowledged a mistake in 1994 when Cokie Roberts was introduced as reporting from the Capitol when she was actually standing in a studio.

d)  local news:

Editor walks out of Post By Ariel Weiss, Ha'aretz Correspondent
Ha'aretz 14.1.2000

Jerusalem Post Executive Editor David Makovsky announced his resignation yesterday, only one week after the departure of the Vice-Chairman of the paper's Board of Directors, Hirsh Goodman, over differences of opinion with the Post's publisher, the Hollinger Group, and its Israel representative, Tom Rose.

Makovsky announced that he was resigning "due to irreconcilable differences regarding the paper's management." At the newspaper's offices yesterday the word was that Makovsky, who has only been at his position since August, 1999, was leaving as a result of the desire of Hollinger Group co-owner David Radler to place David Bar-Illan, a former aide to Benjamin Netanyahu, in the position. Then Bar-Illan could have an influence on the paper's op-ed page and the editorial column, it was said.

According to this version, Makovsky had agreed to leave Ha'aretz, where he was diplomatic correspondent, only after receiving an oral promise from the Post that the paper would take a position in favor of the peace process - particularly on its op-ed page.

Several weeks ago, Makovsky and Goodman blocked the publisher's instruction to publish Bar-Illan's column on the front page twice a week. Following Goodman's resignation, the management informed Makovsky of its intention of establishing an editorial board , on which Bar-Illan would be a member. Makovsky claimed that this was an attempt to place Bar-Illan in a position of influence, and announced his resignation.

Contribution.
If you think that IMW's work is important and helps maintain a democratic civil society in Israel and aids in providing a couter-balance to the pervasive and powerful influence of an unchecked media, you are invited to make a contribution. In Israel, our address is listed below.
For those in the United States, tax-exempt donations can be made out to "PEF" located at 317 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10017. 
Please add a note that your gift is a recommended grant for Israel's Media Watch. Annual dues: Israel - 120 NIS;  Abroad - $50. If you can suggest other names of interested persons and institutions, please feel free to do so.