Deputy AG: Media regulation bill needs more work before Knesset deliberation

Parliamentary deliberations on Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s controversial media regulation bill should be halted and the legislation referred back to the government, Deputy Attorney General Avital Sompolinsky tells the recently established contentious Committee for Deliberating the Communications Bill.

“A government bill is supposed to come to the Knesset only after the government has completed its work and the required legal approval has been granted, and not when substantive disputes are still unresolved,” Sompolinsky tells lawmakers, prompting opposition calls to halt discussions on the bill.

In response, Communications Ministry director general Elad Makdasi counters that the Justice Ministry was “demanding a veto right, such that any further advancement of the legislative process would require their approval — effectively a halt to the Knesset’s deliberations — and this is a demand we cannot accept.”

In response, a representative of the Justice Ministry says that after the legislation was approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, “we made it clear that the process was not finished and that more time was needed.”

“We did not demand a veto option, only to preserve the accepted work process,” she states.

Weighing in, Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs insists that a government decision “is binding on everyone… as long as there is no High Court of Justice order freezing the legislation.”

The Knesset voted earlier this month to establish the special panel to advance the bill, which aims to give the government significant control over broadcast media, news sites, and other media by establishing a new regulatory council, a majority of whose members would be chosen by the communications minister, that would have an array of authorities over broadcast media, including the ability to issue hefty fines.

The special committee is meant to bypass Likud MK David Bitan, chairman of the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee, which usually deals with media-related legislation. Bitan has expressed opposition to the bill in its current form.

Despite assurances from the coalition that the legislation is intended to increase freedom of the press, chairwoman MK Galit Distel Atbaryan (Likud) has used the new committee as a platform for attacking the media, stating during the panel’s inaugural session that the media was “centralized, monopolistic and frighteningly oppressive.”