Ministers back bill to privatize Kan public broadcaster, call for Haaretz boycott
Opponents say ministers’ push to shutter Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation within 2 years would ‘severely harm freedom of the press’ and aims to stifle criticism of government
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Only hours after the cabinet voted unanimously on Sunday to support a boycott of the left-wing Haaretz daily, the Ministerial Committee on Legislation gave its backing to a bill mandating the privatization of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation within two years, effectively closing down the public broadcaster.
The private member’s bill, sponsored by Likud MK Tally Gotliv, would require the government to issue a tender for the purchase of the television and radio networks controlled by the IPBC, which operates the Kan public broadcaster and Reshet Bet radio, among others.
According to the proposed legislation, which is identical to a bill previously proposed by Communications Minister Shlomi Karhi, if a buyer cannot be found in two years, the broadcaster will be shuttered completely and its intellectual property will revert to the government.
In the bill’s explanatory notes, Gotliv said that the broadcaster’s current output does not justify its “extremely high” government budget and that the move is necessary to “increase competition” in the media market.
The Attorney General’s Office strongly disagreed with Gotliv, writing to Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who chairs the high-level ministerial body, to express its concern and to note that given how many Israelis get their news through television, closing the broadcasting corporation would minimize sources of news free from external influences.
In their letter, deputy attorney generals Meir Levin and Avital Sompolinsky argued against advancing such far-reaching legislation by way of a private member’s bill rather than as government legislation — which would necessitate going through a rigorous examination by ministerial professionals.
The Attorney General’s Office also asserted that the bill sent a “clear and serious” message that “criticism of the government or broadcast of content that is not favorable to the government may lead to measures against the media.”
Addressing employees during a gathering on Sunday, Kan director general Golan Yochpaz warned that the coalition sought to harm the broadcaster’s independence and argued that its metrics for claiming that the IPBC was failing to reach viewers failed to take into account its large online following.
Writing to members of the committee, the Union of Journalists in Israel accused the government of “weakening public broadcasting and restricting press freedom,” according to The Seventh Eye, a left-leaning media watchdog site.
The Movement for Quality Government watchdog also harshly criticized the bill, calling its advancement “another step in an orchestrated and planned campaign to weaken Israeli democracy and severely harm freedom of the press,” and warning against what it called a “political takeover of independent media in Israel.”
A larger campaign
Three weeks ago, the Ministerial Committee on Legislation gave its backing to another bill granting the government increased control over the IPBC’s budget.
In response, Kan argued that its budgetary structure was designed “to prevent any political intervention in its content” and warned that the bill constituted “another attempt to harm the independence and significance of the IPBC.”
The twin bills dealing with the IPBC are being advanced at the same time as the coalition is promoting a third piece of legislation aimed at granting the government oversight of television ratings data.
The ratings bill, which passed a preliminary reading 53-49 in the Knesset plenum late last month, would allow the communications minister to assume control of the currently independent organization that supplies publishers with this information.
Taking office two years ago, Karhi vowed to make shutting down or sidelining the IPBC his first move. The minister has said repeatedly that he wants to create greater competition in the media landscape and distribute public funds to a variety of outlets instead of just one.
Boycotting Haaretz
In addition to backing the bill to close down the IPBC, the government on Sunday announced that it was severing ties with the Haaretz daily in response to publisher Amos Schocken’s recent comments referring to Palestinian terrorists as “freedom fighters.”
In a statement, Communications Minister Karhi announced that he and other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet had voted unanimously in support of his proposal to cut off all advertising and announcements of government tenders both in the printed edition and on the Haaretz website.
The resolution states that while the government supports a free press and freedom of expression, it “will not accept a situation in which the publisher of an official newspaper calls for the imposition of sanctions against it and supports its enemies in the middle of a war.”
“A Palestinian state must be established, and the only way to achieve this I think is to apply sanctions against Israeli leader.”
During a conference in London, Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken made a call for international sanctions against Israel and its PM Benjamin Netanyahu,… pic.twitter.com/oO9TiILiCn
— TRT World (@trtworld) October 31, 2024
As such, the government will “sever any advertising relationship with the newspaper Haaretz and calls on all its branches, ministries and bodies, as well as any government corporation or body funded by it, not to have contact with the Haaretz newspaper in any form and not to publish any publications in it.”
Haaretz reacted scathingly. “The opportunist resolution to boycott Haaretz… is another step in Netanyahu’s journey to dismantle Israeli democracy,” Haaretz said in a statement.
“Like his friends Putin, Erdoğan, and Orbán, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper,” it added.
According to Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, despite the way it was presented, the government’s boycott of Haaretz “is not a governmental decision” but rather “a governmental declaration, because it wouldn’t be legal to pass such a decision” discriminating between news outlets.
“If you read this declaration carefully, you can see that the government is calling on agencies to do this and that but is not authorizing anything,” she stated, predicting that any ministerial boycotts that do end up happening will quickly lead to legal action on Haaretz’s part.
The coalition’s push to take control of television ratings and privatize the IPBC are similarly performative because there is currently insufficient coalition support to pass such legislation, she contended, accusing the government of engaging in political “trolling” in order to distract the public from ongoing political scandals.
“Think about what Netanyahu has been doing during the past week. He’s been attacking three major public institutions: the attorney general, the Shin Bet and Kan. They were all involved in one way or another in the exposing of intelligence leaks and the Feldstein story,” she said.
Amy Spiro contributed to this report.
