Israel's
Media Watch
update report # 41
April 28, 2000
Contents:
- IMW News
- Words of Wisdom
- Media News (Israel and Other)
- The Vinograd Committee,
established to plug police leaks and
probe police investigations, recommended that a suspect's name
not be published before he or she is indicted.
We trust our friends and supporters
enjoyed the Pesach (Passover) Holiday.
IMW News
1. IMW complained about Kol Yisrael radio broadcaster Aryeh Golan,
who not only violated professional ethics by expressing his
personal opinion
on Prime Minister Barak's policies by describing them in loaded
terminology,
but he took issue with MK Moshe Arens' criticism of the same.
Golan called Barak's decision to withdraw from Southern Lebanon
as
"courageous". IMW pointed out that no IBA
employee has the right to use
such langauge. "After all", our complaint read,
"the decision could also
have been described as either 'wise', 'foolish' or even idiotic
by any other
IBA employee." This rule is not pity but its purpose
is to prevent a
politicized staff from dominating a monopoly over the news and
the public
agenda.
2. IMW requested that IBA Ombudsman Amos Goren investigate an
editorial mishap when a seemingly bogus news item was broadcast
by
military affairs reporter Carmella Menasheh. Menasheh
notified the public
that for the Pesach [Passover] holiday, officers would inspect
the personal
effects of
soldiers to make sure that toothbrushes had special tags
labelling them
as 'Kosher for Pesach'.
IMW noted that no response had been sought from either the IDF
Spokesman's
Office or the Military Rabinate and that it probably originated
with a far
left-wing
Member of Knesset who was quoted at the end of the report.
3.
IMW asked the acting Commander of Galatz, the Army Radio station,
if
the appearance of Mrs. Naava Barak, wife of Prime Minister Barak,
as a guest
host was a precedent and if in the future, other politicians'
wives will have a chance
at commandeering a microphone. IMW noted that not only was
Barak a political
figure but that her husband was none other than the Minister of
Defense,
the minister responsible for the station and its funding.
IMW suspects that a possible public relations gimmick could lead
to an
all-out politicization of the station. Back in 1991, it
should be recalled, Barak,
then Commander-in-Chief, sought to close the station down
completely.
4.
Another IMW complaint dealt with a studio discussion on the
Channel One
news program, "Seven and A Half", of the Arab staudent
demonstration at the
Hebrew University. IMW questioned why it was seen fit, in
addition to the Arab
students' organization chairman, to host MK Ahmed Tibi.
This introduced a
partisan political element into the 8 minute item and,by
excluding any Jewish
politician, presented an unbalanced talk.
5.
IMW delivered a Position Paper on the future of public
broadcasting to
the special committee appointed by the Minister of Science,
Culture and Sport.
and chaired by Dr. Chaim Breishit.
Media News from Israel
1.
Vinograd panel seeks to rein in police leaks
by Margot Dudkevitch, Jerusalem Post, April 16, 2000
The Vinograd Committee, established
to plug police
leaks and probe police investigations, recommended that a suspect's
name
not be published before he or she is indicted.
In its report submitted yesterday, some committee members felt it
necessary
to impose a gag order until after the suspect appears in court.
Established
by justice minister Tzahi Hanegbi and minister of internal
security Avigdor
Kahalani in September 1998, the committee, headed by former Tel
Aviv
District Court president Eliahu Vinograd, was asked to examine
policy
measures to be taken regarding the publishing of details from
police
investigations and suspects' names.
During the period the committee met, the nation was rocked by a
series of
police probes concerning public officials ranging from opposition
leader
Ariel Sharon and Maj.-Gen. (res.) Avigdor (Yanush) Ben-Gal,
Hanegbi, former
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Ma'ariv publisher Ofer Nimrodi,
and
President Ezer Weizman.
The committee noted "the public is entitled to know that a
felony has been
committed and a suspect is in custody and whether the suspect
committed the
felony." Regarding public officials, the committee
noted that while there is a
problem defining who is a public official and what felonies are
considered
the public's right to know, there is place to inform the public
of the
suspicions against the officials in the early stages of the
investigation.
Publishing details of the investigation can cause harm to the
suspect and
not only invade his privacy but also can affect the judicial
process, the
committee noted in its report. It advised against calling for
legislation
to permit publishing identifying details about a suspect and
information
from the investigation, opting instead to allow one of the
enforcement
bodies to oversee the issue.
Police commanders or directors of enforcement bodies should be
held
accountable for leaks from police investigations, the committee
noted.
Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Internal Security Minister
Shlomo
Ben-Ami, who received the committee findings yesterday, plan to
set up a
monitoring committee to supervise the implementation of its
recommendations
and decide whether the measures are effective or need to be
strengthened by
legislature.
Meanwhile, the police came under fire from members of the Knesset
Law
Committee over leaks to the media on investigations and the
handling of
public officials subject to police probes.
Ben-Ami told the committee that the police were not the only
source of
leaks and suggested that the MK's also check leaks from the State
Attorney's Office. He said he is considering pushing a bill that
will
require the police to receive the attorney-general's permission
before
investigating former prime ministers
Media News from Abroad:
1.
Egyptian journalists snub Israeli colleagues
The Egyptian union of journalists says it has pulled out of an
international media conference in the capital, Cairo, because
Israel was
taking part.
A press release quoted by the French News Agency, AFP said the
decision
was in line with a union resolution banning normalisation of
contacts
with Israelis as long as Arab territories were occupied by Israel.
It said the union hand not been notified that an Israeli
delegation
would be present. The conference, which brings representatives
from the
world's news industry, opened yesterday and continues until
Saturday.
Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/middle_east/newsid_728000/728816.stm
- BBC News
2.
Lipsky Ousted as editor of The Forward
The Jewish Press, www.thejewishpress.com:
Media Monitor: The Forward's Big Step Backward by Jason
Maoz
April 21, 2000
The commissars of the Forward Association
never much cared for the subversive
tendencies exhibited by Seth Lipsky -
subversive in the sense of his apparent
inability to recite by rote the dreary, discredited dogma of the
socialist left. And so news of Lipsky's ouster as editor of the
English-language Forward comes as hardly a shock to anyone
acquainted with the mindset of those who think of G-d as a
labor unionist and Moses as His first shop steward.
Indeed, the real surprise is that Lipsky managed to survive for
nearly a decade. Signs always abounded of knives drawn and
waiting, from the periodic grumbling over the paper's direction
by Forward Association members to the outraged response of
some readers whenever the Forward portrayed the left in
anything but the most positive of lights.
Though Lipsky describes himself as a neoconservative, the
Forward under his watch was by no stretch of the imagination a
conservative publication. News coverage was expansive and
balanced, and editorials usually came down squarely on the
liberal side of the political spectrum (including endorsements of
Mayor Dinkins in 1993 and President Clinton in 1992 and
1996).
But Lipsky drew the line at parroting the party line of the
Yiddish-speaking socialists - a species nearly extinct in America
everywhere outside of perhaps a few Miami Beach condos and
the Forward building in Manhattan - and for this he was
viewed as a reactionary by detractors whose ideological forbears
would no doubt have condemned him as an ''enemy of the
people.''
Equally problematic was Lipsky's refusal to make obeisance to
the functionaries and bureaucrats who presume to lead the
Jewish community (one memorable Forward front-page story
listed the outsized salaries of presidents of various Jewish
organizations) and who, with rare exception, find their
inspiration not in the Bible or the Talmud but in the editorials
of The New York Times and the platform of the Democratic
Party.
3.
Uday is 'journalist of the century'
The flamboyant eldest son of President Saddam Hussein, Uday, whom
dissidents claim is barely literate, has been voted ''journalist
of the
century'' by his dutiful colleagues. They hailed his ''defence of
honest
and committed speech''.
All but four of the 702 members of the Iraqi journalists' union
voted
for Uday. He was also re-elected earlier this week to head the
union
after standing unopposed. The accolade comes after his triumph
last
month in parliamentary elections when he garnered 99.9 per cent
of the
vote in Baghdad.
Uday, a bearded, 35-year-old whom defectors portray as a fervent
torturer, serial rapist and unrepentant killer, owns television
and
radio stations and is chairman of the board of seven weekly
newspapers.
He also publishes Babel, the best-selling daily which two years
ago ran
his 300-page political science doctoral thesis as a soporific
supplement. In it he argued that the US would lose its global
dominance
in the 21st century.
Latif Yahia, an Iraqi defector who was in the same class as Uday
at the
elite Baghdad School for Boys, has claimed that Saddam's son used
to
turn up for school in a Porsche, was playful with teachers and
never did
any homework. However, he always got top marks.
Source:
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/04/20/x-timfgnmid03002.html
- The Times
4. (note: in Israel, we experienced a similar incident when a
Channel Two
TV reporter filmed the family of a traffic accident victim being
informed
that their relative had been killed. It caused a storm some
two years ago
but no hard rules were fixed as far as IMW knows regarding
professional ethics
in such cases. As regards military deaths, the accepted
norm is that
the family must be told before names are broadcast and that even
an
anonymous death is to be banned prior to the family being
notified. The
Ha'Aretz newspaper, claiming that foreign news programs such as
CNN
already announce battle casualties, has broken that norm in
printing the
fact that casualties have occured while witholding names.)
Russian TV informs woman of husband's Kosovo death
Russian state television shocked viewers on Thursday by
broadcasting an
interview with a woman before and after informing her that her
husband
had died while performing peacekeeping duties in Kosovo.
RTR television's correspondent in Ivanovo, 200 km northeast of
Moscow,
was the first person to tell the woman her 31-year-old
husband, who had
been due to return home in May, had been shot dead in Kosovo.
Before breaking the news to the woman, the journalist filmed her,
smiling timidly and looking in amazement at the surprise guest.
''Natasha will learn about her husband's death in a couple of
minutes
from us. Now she is cooking dinner for herself and her four-year-old
daughter,'' he said in his report. ''Natasha is very puzzled by
the
interest television is paying to her, an ordinary textile
worker.''
Seconds later, the woman and her mother-in-law were shown sobbing
uncontrollably.
The war in Chechnya has left women weeping over the coffins of
their
slain sons and husbands into a familiar television sight, but the
RTR
footage was unprecedented in its treatment of a family tragedy.
An RTR
editor told Reuters: ''It was a chance occurrence of
circumstances.''
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000427_4218.html
- ABC
News / Reuters
5.
And even a bit of Humor:
There is something about a big story that brings out the best and
worst in
our friends of the Fourth Estate. The Miami Herald reports that a
new sign reading
"Warning! No pens allowed. Subject to search." has been
posted in the tent city outside the
home of Elian Gonzalez's relatives. The sign is the result of an
altercation
in which a New York Post reporter allegedly stabbed a local NBC
television
cameraman with her pen. The Herald says the cameraman is okay,
but the Post
scribe has been charged with aggravated battery. A police
spokesman jokingly
warned the rest of the press corps that they will be restricted
to writing
with crayons.
Words of Wisdom:
"As an interviewer, Leonardo DiCaprio is no Tim Russert.
However, the network could have made a worse decision than
assigning a 25-year-old actor to talk global warming with
the president. For instance, it could have given the job to
any of the people responsible for the rest of the show."
- Gail Collins, "ABC Hits (Melting) Iceberg",
New York Times, April 25, 2000
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.
Join & Support IMW's activities to
assure fair, reliable and pluralistic broadcasting on Israel's
public electronic media:
POB 6023 Jerusalem 91060 - Tel: 02-6236425 Fax: 02-6236426
E-mail: isrmedia@netvision.net.il
Web site: our new registered domain name: www.imw.org.il
Israel's Media Watch is a non-partisan civic advocacy group - IMW is a registered non-profit organization whose major aim is assuring the ethical and fair conduct of the Israeli media.
Home Page - Most recent articles - Publications - Update
reports
- Freedom
of Speech - Biased
News
- GSS Agent Avishai Raviv &
his IBA's collaborators - Elections 1999 - Anti-Semitic
/ Anti-Religious trends in Israeli Media - Anti-Religious Cartoons - Articles
op-ed
Reports - "On
the Lookout" - IBA's Affairs - News
Items
This page hosted by Geocities
Get your own FreeHome Page