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Proposed Broadcast Media Law: Attempt to Ravage Free Media in Israel

>> Read the full Position Paper in PDF

This document addresses the draft of the Broadcast Media Law-2025, a government bill promoted by the Communications Ministry headed by Minister Shlomo Karhi.

Although the bill has been somewhat softened compared to the original version proposed by Karhi, the current version – if passed as is – will throw the doors wide open to political and economic influences on news broadcasts, thereby severely harming the free media in Israel and the constitutional fundamental rights of freedom of the press and freedom of expression, which are the prerequisites of a properly functioning democratic regime.

Israel’s broadcasting market has long been in dire need of a fundamental reform, and several public committees appointed by the Communications Ministry have over the years published recommendations on the subject. Indeed, the bill includes substantive and necessary updates, but alongside these, it contains a destructive core and proposes arrangements that were never recommended by these committees, such as:

Abolition of mechanisms anchored in law protecting the independence and autonomy of news broadcasts, enabling interference therein by elements with vested political and economic interests.

Concern over political motivations behind the appointment of the public representatives in the new Broadcast Media Authority’s Council due to the structure of the search committee established for this purpose and the fact that its budget will not be independent but rather part of the annual state budget.

  • Serious concern about major cut in investment in local productions due to a significant reduction in the requirement to invest in local productions currently stipulated by law.
  • Politicization of the ratings data due to guidelines that might enable the BMA Council to interfere with the way the data is measured.
  • Empowering the Communications Ministry to requisition information from the BMA in a way that will infringe on its autonomy and enable the political echelon to interfere with its work and with the management of broadcast providers..

Zulat’s position is that Israel’s broadcasting market calls for revised regulation that focuses on merging legal provisions for players with similar characteristics and on promoting effective but not unlimited competition. The proposed law, however, fulfills none of these goals but serves a different purpose: to weaken a free and independent media and subject it to political and economic pressures. As such, it has no place in a democratic country and must be removed from the Knesset’s agenda.

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Dr. Maha Sabbah Karkabi

 

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tel Aviv University (2015), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London (2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University (2016-2017), and a postdoctoral fellowship Ph.D. at the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2018-2020).
Dr. Maha Karbahi’s areas of interest focus on the connection between social change, family behavior, and gender inequality in societies in the process of change and specifically in Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Her research draws attention to the study of family life and employment, using a combined “ethnic lens” and “gender lens” and paying attention to the perspective of Palestinian Arab women, a group characterized by intersections between multiple marginal locations, which over the years has remained hidden from the research eye. Dr. Karkabi-Sabah’s research is published in professional journals and chapters in scientific books that are considered pioneers in family research, work, and gender equality.

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Prof. Frances Raday

Professor Emeritus in the Lieberman Chair in Labor Law, in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and serves as a full professor in the College of Management’s academic track, where she also serves as chair of the graduate program and as honorary president of the Concord Center for International Law Absorption. Radai was a member of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council on discrimination against women. In addition, she is a prominent and feminist human rights activist.

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Dr. Rawia Aburabia 

Faculty member of Sapir Academic College’s School of Law, received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research deals with the interface between law, gender, minorities, and human rights. Has published in leading journals on the subject of the matrimonial laws pertaining to Muslim women in Israel. Her book Under the Law, Outside Justice: Polygamy, Gendered Citizenship, and Colonialism in Israeli Law is expected to be published as part of the Gender Series of Kibbutz Meuhad Publishing House.

Dr. Aburabia has extensive experience in international human rights and public law. She has worked as a jurist for the Association for Civil Right and has been invited as a specialist to address such international forums as the United Nations and the European Parliament on the subject of indigenous communities and minority rights. She has interned with Human Rights Watch in Washington DC, and has been a member of the executive board of Amnesty International. In 2018, she was selected by the magazine Globes as one of the 40 most promising young persons in Israel under the age of 40.

 

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Ron Kessler

With over two decades of experience in the field of digital content, Ron has participated in numerous political and social campaigns. He helped run the digital activity of senior public officials, and worked in various NGOs. Ron is a fundamentally optimistic man, who believes that Israel can be changed and so can people. Lives in Tel Aviv.