Israel's Media Watch
update report # 29

Israel's Media Watch Update Report # 29 - February 11, 2000

- Carmella Menasheh broadcast interviews with soldiers
- The supposed original film Eitan Oren recorded
- Attorney-General, Elyakim Rubinstein
- A bereaved parent claimed his words were taken out of context
- Censors in the matter of discussing on air the police raid against Arutz 7
- IBA's budget
- Dalia Ya'iri's Kol Yisrael program
- Shelly Yechimovicvz: "I voted for Chadash"
- Israeli TV under fire after filming wounded soldiers in Lebanon
- Peace Project January 2000 Survey : The Media
- Eye on the Media: "Retreat from courage" By David Bar-Illan:
- The coverage of the comptroller's report on Barak's nonprofit organizations
- Alternative action - By Lily Galili - Ha'aretz 4 Febrary 2000
- Barak Money In The Russian Sector Included Pay-Offs To Reporters
- Jordan's king promises greater press freedom
- In Egypt, Female journalists struggle against male dominance

IMW News

1.   Alerted to the fact that Kol Yisrael's Carmella Menasheh broadcast interviews
with soldiers without submitting her story to the censor, IMW complained
about the legal infraction.  IMW also called attention to the fact that her editor is
also suspect in this matter.

2.   Regarding the broadcast of the evacuation of wounded soldiers as well as scenes
of their emergency medical treatment, IMW supports providing the public with full knowledge
of events, including news of military operations.  Nevertheless, close-up shots of soldiers
in state of undress or particularly gruesome scenes should be edited tastefully.

3.   IMW, in preparation for the scheduled High Court of Justice session next Monday,
February 14, has prepared an eight-minute clip of scenes from the film material the police
provided us of the supposed original film Eitan Oren recorded.
We note "supposed" because we think we discovered at least two, possibly three
instances where the film may have been cut and edited.  In any case, as we
do not have the original BETA version, if it still exists, we could not have the
film checked by professional labs.

4.   The Attorney-General, Elyakim Rubinstein, has replied to all of our complaints,
acknowledging their receipt (suspension of Rafik Halaby, TV's news director; appointment
qualification of Yaakov Erez to Wye Incitement Committee; and censorship activity by
employees of Kol Yisrael).
     He noted that the legal advisor of the Prime Minister's office is dealing with our
complaint about Mr. Erez.  The police have not informed us as to progress with our
complaint against the Kol Yisrael prohibition on discussing the police raid on Arutz 7
studios.  As for the Halaby suspension demand by IMW, the A-G is still
studying the police report and recommendation.

5.   The Second Radio and Television Authority (SRATA) ombudsman, Yoel Rekem,
finally replied to our complaint of March 7, 1999 when we noted that the "Mishal Hot"
program broadcast an interview with a bereaved parent who claimed his words
were taken out of context in order to malign Benjamin Netanyahu.
     One of the broadcasters, Chaim Hecht, agreed that the parent's
response to the film clip should have been broadcast at the end of the show.
     IMW responded and noted that it is not too late to apologize and that Mr. Nisim
Mishal, the show's host, should announce an apology in his upcoming program.

6.   Two weeks ago, the Ha'Aretz Weekend Magazine published a letter by
Yaakov Achimeir protesting the behavior of his colleagues at Kol Yisrael in acting as
censors in the matter of discussing on air the police raid against Arutz 7.  The following week,
one of the accused, Eitan Almog, had his letter published.
     IMW responded by pointing out that Almog had taken ethics rules out of
context.  This letter did not appear this week.

7.   IMW's director participated in the Knesset Finance Committee session convened to
authorize the IBA's budget.  He made a presentation highlighting the inadequate
financial responsibility of the IBA in handling public funds.  His call for authorizing a
quarterly budget only was echoed by many MKs.

8.   An IMW study of interview guests appearing on Dalia Ya'iri's Kol Yisrael program,
"An Other Matter", showed that during the period of December 9, 1999 - February 8, 2000,
pro-government guests outnumbered anti-government policy on the issue of Syrian-Israel
negotiations by 29 to 11.  No right-wing commentator was allowed on the air
whereas several overtly pro-government experts appeared.

Words of Wisdom

-  "I voted for Chadash [the Jewish-Arab communist party]"
Shelly Yechimovicvz, "Kol Ha'Ir", January 21, 2000

Israel Media News

Israeli TV under fire after filming wounded soldiers in Lebanon
JERUSALEM, Feb 7 (AFP) -
Israeli television broadcasts of bloody footage from the conflict in Lebanon
has sparked renewed soul-searching in Israel and provoked a barrage of
telephone calls from Israelis, either in criticism or support of the
unprecedented images beamed into their homes Sunday night.

The two Israeli television channels, the first public and the second private,
broadcast images of soldiers, some very seriously wounded, covered in blood
and receiving first aid on stretchers as they awaited evacuation.

The pictures, which recall those from the Vietnam war, have alarmed Israelis
and relaunched the debate surrounding the role of the media in the conflict.

Army spokesman Oded Ben Ami made an official protest to Channel Two, which
broadcast the most graphic pictures.

He accused the television "of not taking into consideration the sensitivities
of the wounded soldiers or their families," a statement said.

Telecommunications Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer said that "he would have
prevented the broadcast of these images which undermine the nation's morale,
if he had had the legal power to do so".

"Israel is already the only country in the world to publicise its losses so
quickly. There are limits on the right to be informed," the Labour minister
said in an interview on public radio.

Channel Two's information director, Shalom Kittal, responded to the radio
that his station was "only doing what was necessary to bring the horrors of
war into Israeli homes".

Israeli radio switchboards were busy with telephone calls from parents of
soldiers favourable and hostile to the grisly broadcasts.

One parent accused the television of "sacrificing everything for viewing
figures".

Another, Yoram Spiegel, who lost his own son in Lebanon in 1982, said however
that these "images were needed to make Israelis understand the price of the
conflict".

For the Maariv paper, the broadcast of images from Lebanon was a "televisual
blow to the head for the Israeli public".

Under the headline "Pictures from Hell" it said "The Lebanese valley of death
penetrated the living room of Mr. Israel after 18 years of avoidance," adding
that a comparison to the television broadcasts during the Vietnam war were
"unavoidable."

PEACE PROJECT JANUARY 2000 SURVEY - THE MEDIA

The Peace Index Project is conducted by the Tami Steinmetz Center
for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, headed by Prof. Ephraim
Yaar and Dr. Tamar Hermann and executed by Machshov.  For the
January 31, 2000 survey, 500 people were interviewed by telephone.
They comprised a representative sampling of the adult Jewish
population (including West Bank and the kibbutzim). Margin of
error is about 4.5%.

Media
Complete confidence 10.6% Confidence 29.5% Almost none 28.5% None 28.8%
Don't know 2.4%

(IMW note:  Mr. Bar-Illan's article is presented as an example of
the inter-connection the media and politics exhibit here in Israel)

EYE ON THE MEDIA: Retreat from courage
By David Bar-Illan, Jerusalem Post, February 4, 2000

Self-congratulation was the order of the day among many Israeli journalists
last week. They felt the coverage of the comptroller's report on Barak's
nonprofit organizations (NPOs) was both fair and courageous. And most
commentators described Barak's television explanation as an evasive,
unconvincing performance.

This evenhandedness did not last. True, the painful events in Lebanon drew
virtually all the media's attention. But there was also an unmistakable
effort to backpedal on Barak's NPOs. It is as if the media suddenly
realized where the excoriation of Barak could lead.

Typical of this effort was a column by Yoel Marcus, the Ha'aretz columnist
who sets the tone of the media's political correctness. Launching a
whitewash campaign, he attacks both the comptroller and the
attorney-general. He does not state that Rubinstein is dishonest - an
attack on the probity of an attorney-general known for unimpeachable
honesty may backfire - just that his conduct is puzzling.

On matters ranging from how to wear phylacteries at morning prayer (lest we
forget the man is one of those suspicious religious characters) to
decisions on prosecution of suspects, says Marcus, he is painfully indecisive.

Yet on Barak's NPOs he rushes to order a criminal investigation!

REALIZING that some of his readers may actually read the scathing
comptroller's report, which leaves no room for doubt that a police
investigation is warranted, Marcus is impelled to discredit him too.

"State comptrollers who are former Supreme Court justices tend to be highly
critical of the norms of our system of government, as if they were writing
the texts of learned rulings."

He even implies a conspiracy: "What secret collaboration between the state
comptroller and the attorney-general led Rubinstein to suddenly decide that
the whole matter... should become the subject of a police inquiry? Why did
an issue regarded as a purely administrative matter become, within the span
of only 24 hours, a matter of criminal proportions?

"And if this whole subject has such massive criminal dimensions, why should
the police investigation exclude the NPOs that supported Bibi and created
this illegal precedent in the first place?..."

And if the Barak campaign did transgress, says Marcus, it is anyway the
fault of the attorney-general, whose office issued a letter doubting there
was ground for criminal prosecution in the case of Habad's aid to
Netanyahu's campaign in 1996.

(The willful refusal to distinguish between the fictitious NPOs established
for the sole purpose of electing Barak and such legitimate organizations as
the pro-Netanyahu Habad is characteristic of Barak's defenders. Few seem to
wonder, as the Wall Street Journal does in a February 1 editorial, why - if
the Barak campaign thought the NPOs were perfectly legal - it was necessary
to label them fraudulently. Nor does any journalist bother to ask why
Netanyahu, whose fall was so eagerly sought, is now used as a model to be
emulated.)

But Marcus's core argument is none of the above. It is the familiar
postulate that the ends - a peace agreement - justify the means, even if
they include illegal NPOs.

This is how Marcus puts it: "Why did it become so crucial to instantly turn
our elected and top-ranking officials, all the way from the prime minister
on down, into individuals suspected of criminal action who must take time
out from discussions with Farouk Shara and from conversations with Yasser
Arafat in order to pay a visit to the police's fraud investigation
department?É

"The confusion created by Rubinstein's blunderÉ is no reason to plunge
Israel, in a year of peace treaties and a national referendum, into an
insane whirlpool of investigations and anarchy."

It is a safe bet that as the commentators realize that the Barak scandal
may adversely affect the peace process, their criticism will turn into
apologia.

The unexpected fairness with which the scandal was initially covered may
have been triggered by pangs of conscience. The mainstream media
consistently refused to pursue complaints about the NPOs lodged with the
police by Likud MKs Limor Livnat and Michael Eitan before the elections.

Even after the election, no journalist except Kalman Liebskind of the small
right-wing weekly Makor Rishon deemed the matter worthy of examination. It
was only when NPO registrar Amiram Bogat revealed deliberate concealment of
information by Barak's bogus organizations that a couple of back-page
stories were published.

Even now, what many consider the most patently criminal practices of the
Barak campaign - violent attacks by hired thugs on Likud campaigners and
provocations by goons masquerading as Likud activists - are almost
completely ignored.

ONE OF the very few who has mentioned these acts is Ma'ariv correspondent
Eli Kamir.

In a carefully worded story about Tal Zilberstein, coordinator of Barak's
campaign and head of Stanley Greenberg's office in Israel, Kamir wrote last
Friday: "Udi Segal of Channel 2 News recalls a traumatic incident from
campaign days. But first, let's make clear that there is no proof that
Zilberstein or his people are connected to what happened to Segal.
Nevertheless, it was Zilberstein who was seen at the scene of the incident
at 3:00 a.m.

"This is how Segal tells it this week: 'A few weeks before the elections we
heard of acts of violence at highway junctions. My crew and I decided to
arrive in the middle of the night at the Glilot intersection to report on
what happened. It cost us dearly. At first, political activists started an
altercation with my crew. When they saw that we were filming, they pulled
their shirts over their faces and started with real force. At one point
they pulled iron rods and hit two of our men on their heads. They simply
cracked their heads and disappeared.'

"Turning to tend to his injured crew members, Segal suddenly saw
Zilberstein standing on the street corner. The crew began to videotape, but
he wouldn't answer questions. He got into a car and disappeared. His
friends recently denied in a newspaper story that he had anything to do
with the incident. 'It's just a smear,' they said."

One can only assume that Zilberstein was at the intersection at 3:00 a.m.
to enjoy the view.

At the time, Segal told the story without mentioning Zilberstein or that
Likud activists tried to protect him and his crew. The identity of the
attackers remained vague, even though the videotape identified them as
associates of a Barak NPO, "Hope for Israel." The story promptly disappeared.

It was not an NPO of which Barak could claim ignorance. As Dana Weiss of
Channel 2 News reported, he was often seen surrounded by its activists.They
were seated in the second row at his victory rally.

PRACTICALLY all the Israeli journalists knew of these incidents, but they
kept quiet, as they did during the 1996 elections, when then prime minister
Shimon Peres used foul expressions against Arabs.

All who heard him decided it was more important to beat Netanyahu than to
tell the story.

And one can only guess what the media would have done had it not been Barak
who declared on television that he never raised funds for his campaign.
This is what the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported from Los Angeles on
March 28, 1999:

"Ehud Barak, head of Israel's Labor Party, paid a quick, unannounced visit
to Los Angeles last week to attend a private fund-raiser hosted by an
Israeli television and movie mogul [Haim Saban]É Some 30 guests attended
the March 25 event - and although no accurate figure on the amount raised
was available, those invited were given to understand that $10,000 would be
the minimum donation expected. In addition, Saban pledged to match every
dollar contributedÉ"

The quality of Saban's connections was revealed in the next paragraph:
"Last fall, Saban hosted a fund-raiser at his home for President Clinton
that yielded $1.5 million." The main source of the funds for the fake NPOs
is said to be Octav Botner, a deceased businessman once wanted by the
British authorities for tax evasion.

His foundation contributed close to NIS 3 million. But following the money
trail in the US, something no Israeli journalist has been willing to do,
may prove more enlightening. It may explain Barak's limitless indebtedness
to Clinton. And it may even shed light on the case of the break-ins into
Stanley Greenberg's Washington office, immediately blamed on the Likud.

The FBI investigated, said it was an inside job, and promptly closed the
case for no apparent reason.

Alternative action - By Lily Galili - Ha'aretz 4 Febrary 2000
Barak Money In The Russian Sector Included Pay-Offs To Reporters

...The community of immigrants from the former Soviet Union was the
target audience, and its political pulse was taken with particular zeal.

Other surveys of the immigrant community were made by Alternativa, which is
now starring in the state comptroller's report. Alternativa was established
in February 1998, with its aim, as stated to the Registrar of Associations,
being "the advancement of immigration matters and activities to integrate
the immigrants into Israeli society." Among the initiators of the idea for
the association, its heads confirm, was Boris Krasny, a former political
advisor to Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, and the owner of Policy, a
consulting firm. In the last elections, Krasny was considered as somebody
who contributed a great deal to Ehud Barak's success within the immigrant
community. Some say that it was he who brought Barak victory in this sector.
At the head of the association was Prof. Amnon Sela, a prominent
Sovietologist. From the moment of its inception, Alternativa began to
generate various rumors. Behind the scenes of the political arena, it was
immediately dubbed "a machine to launder votes for Barak." It was also said
to be an infrastructure that would in future become a satellite party for
immigrants under the protection of the Labor Party.

Prof. Alex Yahut, an immigrant who lives in Be'er Sheva, has told Ha'aretz
that when Alternativa was being set up, its founders contacted him and
invited him to join "a circle of Russian intellectuals who support Barak."
Yahut, a member of the Meretz leadership, refused. Immediately upon its
establishment, the Alternativa people went out to a joint demonstration
against unemployment with Labor Party activists. "We are an independent
association," protested Berta Groisman, who was then the director general of
Alternativa and later moved to Barak's immigrant headquarters, on
"demonstration hill" across from the Prime Minister's Office...
Another story that emerges from the state comptroller's report on the
Alternativa affair is that of the widespread campaign the association
conducted in the Russian sector. It placed paid advertisements in the
Russian-language press and hung placards in the association's cultural
centers, which were phrased, in the language of the state comptroller, "to
lead the reader to prefer the One Israel candidate for prime minister over
the competing candidate." The cost of the campaign was more than NIS
200,000. The huge paid advertisement (about half a page) that Alternativa
published in the Russian-language press four days before the elections
indeed made no mention of the names of candidates, but left no room for
doubt. The heading of the advertisement read: "When we vote for prime
minister we vote for ..." Under this was a series of alternatives: "the
Interior Ministry for all citizens, or the Interior Ministry for Shas; ...
budgets for housing and education, or preferential treatment for the
ultra-Orthodox in the budget; the right to buy and eat whatever we want, or
control of our refrigerators and plates. On May 17, you choose: a prime
minister who makes a covenant with the ultra-Orthodox, or a prime minister
who makes a covenant with you." This was signed by The Alternativa Movement,
with a telephone number. When the advertisement was published, the
association opened a voice mail box for responses from the public. "There
was nothing political in this," claims the director general of Alternativa,
Leonid Smolenov. "We just left a message asking for the public's response to
what we had to say in the prime minister advertisement. We have nothing to
be ashamed of with respect to this advertisement. I don't see it as an
election advertisement at all - as a public organization we encouraged
people to think about what is going on here. That's all."

Just before the elections there was another small incident at Alternativa.
From September 1998 up until the elections the association published three
magazines that bore its name, mostly with intellectual-cultural contents,
free of politics. The person put in charge of editing them was Arkan Kariv,
a journalist known for his left-wing opinions, who had resigned from Vesty.
Before the publication of the last issue he was asked to interview Barak.
Arkan, whose telephone answering machine speaks two languages - Arabic and
Yiddish - is certainly a journalist "with a mind of his own." This is also
how his interview looks; it ranges from Solzhenitzyn to the question of
whether the Israel Defense Forces could capture Moscow. This is also how the
nine photographs in the style of comics, which accompany the interview,
look: The candidate is seen in odd poses and with peculiar expressions on
his face, very different from the soldier on the wing of the Sabena
airplane.

The issue was printed on glossy paper in more than 20,000 copies, but was
never distributed. Smolenov said that in the printing process the negative
and the positive were reversed and people began to complain that the mole on
Barak's face was on the wrong side. The vague explanation that Kariv got for
scuttling the issue was that "the photographs and the text are harmful to
Barak."

"I actually thought that the interview presented Barak as very human, but it
was hinted to me that Barak's people at the immigrants' headquarters thought
that the result did not suit the image they had built up for the candidate
in the Russian community," relates Kariv.

To construct this image, many people in the immigrant sector were enlisted,
including particularly articulate journalists, who were courted by Barak's
immigrants' headquarters for one-off assignments of formulating slogans and
short advertisements. "It was really funny," relates Max Luria, who is now
deputy editor of Vesty and who refused to be enlisted into Barak's service
during the elections. "Lots of my friends got phone calls like that. It was
a whole industry. Usually, there would be a call from someone they didn't
know, but who knew some friend of theirs. The conversation would start out
like this: 'Hello, this is Yasha. You have regards from Sasha. Do you want a
little extra income? We need a short slogan. No, you don't need to come in.
Send it by fax.' The money - about NIS 1,000 for a few minutes' work - would
be handed over in cash.

Media News from Israel's Neighbors

1.   Jordan's king promises greater press freedom

King Abdullah of Jordan has said he is not satisfied with the country's
laws on media freedoms, and has promised to improve the rights of
journalists.

King Abdullah also said the Jordanese government would grant licences to
private radio and television stations from next year.

Correspondents say there has been widespread criticism in the country
over last year's reform of the Press laws, which critics say restrict
freedom of expression and can lead to the arrest of journalists. 

Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/middle_east/newsid_630000/630266.stm
 - BBC News

2.   Female journalists struggle against male dominance

Women journalists in Egypt are struggling for representation in a
country where the political and media establishments remain almost
entirely male dominated.

Journalist Magda Abdul-Badea says there are few female chief editors in
the country and because of this women are generally unable to
participate effectively. ''Women are generally excluded from the
decision-making processes of most newspapers and magazines throughout
the country,'' she says.

Amina Shafiq, who was elected three times as a member of the executive
council of the country's press union during the 1990s, expressed
disappointment at the lack of a woman representative in the present
council. ''The results of the last elections, which were held in June,
give an idea of the crisis facing women both within the press union and
Egyptian society as a whole,'' she says.

According to Ms Shafiq no woman was elected to the new council despite
the fact that nine per cent of the candidates and 30 per cent of the
voters are female.  ''The political and media establishments in Egypt
remain so male dominated that women struggle for any type of
representation,'' she says. 
Source:
http://news.24.com/English/Africa/Northern_Africa/ENG_237829_981752_SEO.asp

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