Israel: RSF condemns the attacks on media independence by the government of Benyamin Netanyahu
As Israel’s war against Gaza and Lebanon rages on, Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi is trying to reshape Israel’s media landscape. Between a law banning foreign media outlets that are deemed dangerous, a bill that would give the government a stranglehold on public television budgets, and the addition of a private pro-Netanyahu channel on terrestrial television exempt from licensing fees, the ultra-conservative minister is augmenting pro-government coverage of the news. Reporters sans frontières (RSF) is alarmed by these unprecedented attacks against media independence and pluralism — two pillars of democracy — and calls on the government to abandon these reforms.
Update, 25 November 2024: on 24 November, two new proposals for measures targeting media critical of the authorities and the war in Gaza and Lebanon were approved by Netanyahu’s government. The Ministerial Committee for Legislation validated a proposed law providing for the privatisation of the public broadcaster Kan, which still needs four votes in Parliament. On the same day, the Council of Ministers unanimously accepted a draft resolution by Communications Minister Shlomo Kahri from November 2023 seeking to cut public aid and revenue from the Government Advertising Agency to the newspaper Haaretz.
For several weeks now, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi has been accelerating his agenda for reforming Israel’s media laws as the war in Gaza and Lebanon intensifies.
The "Al-Jazeera law", as it has been dubbed by the Israeli press, has just been tightened. This exceptional measure was adopted in April 2024 for a four-month period and renewed in July. On 20 November, Israeli MPs voted to extend the law’s duration to six months, and increase the law’s main provision — a broadcasting ban on any foreign media outlet deemed detrimental to national security by the security services — from 45 days to 60.
On 3 November, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation — the body charged with validating bills proposed by members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament — approved a law expanding the communications minister’s control over the media. Currently, if the Ministry of Communication wants to modify the budget of the public broadcaster Kan, which is financed through various sources of public funding and advertising revenue, it must submit legislation through parliament. The new law, however, will allow the ministry to change Kan’s budget directly.
On 28 October, the same committee green-lit changes to the way the analytics of television audiences are tracked. According to the text, the Ministry of Communications would take over the responsibility of tracking these audiences from a private accredited body similar to Médiamétrie in France, Nielsen in the US and GfK in Germany.
“Benyamin Netanyahu’s government is openly targeting media independence and pluralism in Israel. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who follows the hardline stances of the Likud party, is leveraging the ongoing war — the longest in the country’s history — to silence voices that criticise the far-right coalition in power. These media laws are proposed by Likud parliamentarians and swiftly approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, which is dominated by the same party. These legal attacks – especially the legislation concerning the public broadcaster Kan — will have lasting, detrimental effects on Israel's media landscape. Most notably, the free press in a country that describes itself as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ will be undermined. RSF calls on Israel’s political authorities, starting with Minister Shlomo Karhi and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, to act responsibly and abandon these proposed reforms.
Critical media outlets labeled as propaganda
Minister Shlomo Karhi has never hidden his disdain for public service media. He has referred to his critics in the Knesset as "terrorists" and accused the editorial staff of the liberal newspaper Haaretz of engaging in "anti-Israeli propaganda." In March 2023, he unveiled a vast plan to restructure the media landscape just three months after his appointment to Benyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet in December 2022. The series of laws currently being debated stem from this plan, which is being adopted in stages.
Key parts of this strategy include weakening Kan and reinforcing certain private channels, such as Channel 14, which strongly supports the current ruling coalition. In August 2024, Channel 14 was added to the list of channels broadcast on terrestrial television, an initiative of the Likud party and Minister Shlomo Karhi. The private channel does not pay for its own licensing fees; they are covered by Kan.
Another bill approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on 30 June would allow radio frequencies to be allocated by the communications minister, who ultimately aims to dismantle the independent body currently responsible for this task, known as Second Authority.
Even before the "Al-Jazeera” law was extended in April 2024, the Minister had banned the Lebanese television channel Al-Mayadeen, which takes a pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iran editorial stance, from broadcasting in Israel in November 2023.
Inside Israel, journalists critical of the government and the war have been facing pressure and intimidation for over a year. In Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, journalists continue to be targeted by the Israeli army. Since 7 October 2023, the Israeli military has killed over 145 journalists in the besieged Palestinian enclave, and at least 35 of them slain in the course of their work, according to RSF’s information.
