Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s Broadcasting Law has indeed been watered down since it was first introduced in 2023. The ratings provision has been softened, and the requirement for a license to broadcast news has been relaxed. There are also positive elements in the law. For example, it requires international streaming giants to allocate part of their revenues to high-quality Israeli productions. And yet, the law still has problems. The most important is that Karhi wants to abolish the firewall between commercial television channels and their news divisions. At a ministerial committee hearing, he justified this by saying that Channels 12 and 13, where the firewall exists, broadcast lies, while Channel 14, where there is no firewall, broadcasts the truth. Conclusion: there is no need for a firewall.
The second argument made by supporters of the law is that there is no such thing anywhere else in the world. Perhaps. Every now and then, Israel also comes up with an intelligent innovation. After 22 years working at a commercial television channel, I can testify that protecting the news division greatly limits the ability of outside interests to influence the news broadcast. Usually, the channel’s owners do not even dare try.
Israel really does have a unique case study. On Channel 14, there is no separation, and the channel’s main personality, Yinon Magal, threatens advertisers with boycotts, confronts companies that do advertise on the channel in filmed segments, and his Telegram channel charged a reservist for advertising without proper disclosure. During all my years at Channel 13 (formerly Channel 10), no one connected to advertising on the channel ever asked me for anything. Usually, I have no idea who they are. A campaign like the one we waged at Channel 13 News against the appointment of an unsuitable editor-in-chief, Julya Shamlov-Berkovich, could not exist in a world where the firewall had been removed and the owners could appoint whoever they wanted and fire them at a moment’s notice.
The second issue is ratings. At the Justice Ministry, they repeatedly tried to understand from Karhi and his associates why the government needs to be involved in publishing ratings data. Nowhere I know of in the world does this exist. Advertising agencies may not be required to take into account the figures obtained by the Communications Ministry from various broadcasters, but the government’s involvement could still exert external pressure on them. As someone who is dying of curiosity to know the viewing figures kept by Yes or HOT, I would be very happy for them to publish the numbers so I could see how reliable the ratings committee’s figures are; but what does the government have to do with this extremely sensitive issue?
Karhi and his associates’ answer is: Why should we have to explain the purpose of the legislation? Really, why? They are the rulers; they do not need to justify themselves. Channel 14 has a theory that the ratings figures are unreliable, and voilà — the communications minister creates special legislation for them.
Then there is the issue of cross-ownership. When this difficult battle was fought in the 1990s, its purpose was to prevent newspaper owners from also acquiring television channels and creating a situation in which three people would control the entire market of opinions and news. The legislation succeeded. An eternity has passed since then, and there is a reasonable case for changing the status quo. The problem is that Karhi and his associates refuse to hold a detailed discussion about the proposed arrangement. On the one hand, you do not want a system that would allow Yitzhak Mirilashvili, the owner of Channel 14, or Noni Mozes to take control of half of Israel’s media. On the other hand, there is logic in allowing wealthy individuals who are already invested in one media platform to compete on additional platforms as well.
The bottom line is that if the communications minister were genuinely interested in passing this legislation by consensus, it would have been possible to reach a government bill that would also receive legal backing. At the crucial moment, when Karhi had to choose between getting things done and picking a fight, he chose the fight. Perhaps he was simply afraid that the American administration would not allow him to pass the legislation because of the restrictions it imposes on streaming giants, so he preferred to pick a fight, at least.