Controversial Channel 10 CEO fired for embellishing resume

The board of directors of Channel 10 on Sunday voted to fire CEO Rami Sadan, ending his employment at the television station four months into his tenure after it was discovered the controversial director padded his resume with work experience he didn’t have but that was required for the senior position.

Prior to his appointment, Sadan falsely told the Broadcasting Authority that between 1996 and 2006 he held various senior managerial positions at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek medical center, a prerequisite for the Channel 10 appointment.

But a recent investigation by the daily business journal The Marker revealed that Sadan did not serve in a management position in the hospital’s fundraising or public relations department.

According to the journal’s findings, Sadan served in various roles at the hospital, but spent most of his career as the director of Shaare Zedek’s printing and publishing department, under the purview of the hospital’s purchasing manager.

Sadan, a political lobbyist and former close associate of the Netanyahu family, never managed any hospital staff members during his employment at the hospital, the investigation found.

The journal further uncovered that in 1990, Sadan was demoted to more junior role in a part-time position following unspecified complaints over his conduct. It wasn’t clear what position he held at the time of his demotion.

The board also voted to terminate Eitan Singer as the public representative on the Channel 10 board for failing to disclose that he ran for the Tel Aviv Municipality as a member of the Yesh Atid political party.

The Second Authority for Television & Radio, the public body that oversees commercial broadcasting in Israel, said the decision to terminate Sadan and Singer “set a clear standard for reliability, dependability and accuracy required by public representatives in the news media.”

Saban made headlines earlier this year for reportedly making disparaging comments about Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, who heads the Sephardi Orthodox Shas party, as well about Israelis of African and Middle Eastern descent.

On June 2, he was quoted as telling the Channel 10 News board of directors: “Let’s tell the truth: I, like you, part of the elite, hate the Shas movement and that thief Aryeh Deri. But we, as the elite, have to broaden the channel’s circles and appeal to the audience of Shas, to Massouda from Sderot,” using a stereotype referring to a person of Mizrahi descent living on Israel’s periphery.

Deri served a prison sentence between 2000 and 2002 for graft, before resuming his political career ahead of the 2015 Knesset elections. The interior minister is currently under investigation on new graft suspicions.

Immediately after the comments were published, Shas called on Netanyahu — who is also communications minister — to fire Sadan, threatening to break coalition discipline and skip Knesset votes until he did. Shas MKs have stayed away from the plenum, entering only to vote against an opposition bill on conversion.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.