Communications Minister MK Shlomo Karhi presented on Wednesday a revamped proposal for partial privatization of Israel’s Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC), known as KAN, according to which its news section will be privatized, but its original content section will remain state-funded.
The proposal suggests that KAN’s news branch be shut down, its main news radio station, KAN Reshet Bet, be privatized, and the corporation’s budget be cut from NIS 800 million to NIS 500m., much of which will go towards cultural content on its main television station, Channel 11.
Further, KAN’s educational television channel will remain; its Arabic news and content channel, 33, will be shut down, but its non-Hebrew radio stations in Arabic, Russian, and Amharic will remain.
Finally, the employees affected by the move at KAN will receive “respectable pension conditions.”
The initiative was revealed in a contentious debate concerning Karhi’s policies regarding KAN on Wednesday in the Knesset’s Economic Affairs Committee.
Attempt to stifle speech?
The president of the Israel Press Council, former chief justice Hanan Meltzer, opened the meeting with sharp criticism of Karhi’s initiative.
According to Meltzer, the proposed law dictated that both KAN’s budget and content were independent.
KAN’s budget was intentionally set in law separately from the rest of the state budget to prevent politicians from using the budget as leverage to threaten it not to broadcast critical content.
Meltzer argued that it was one thing to cut KAN’s budget at an equal share as the rest of government institutions, but a specific, deep cut to KAN was legally problematic since it indicated an attempt to stifle free speech.
Karhi countered that there was no reason to maintain a public news program since there was competition in the market and, therefore, market forces should determine KAN’s share. This was a lessening of government intervention, not an attempt to increase it, Karhi argued.
Deputy Attorney-General Meir Levin said that privatizing KAN’s news branch means that the government was, in effect, shutting down a major source of information and that it was not clear that the move was constitutionally viable.
Levin also criticized Karhi for pushing through his policies via private members of Knesset and not as government-sponsored bills.
Government bills must go through rigorous legal examination by the Attorney General’s Office, while private bills do not. Levin added that this was an indication that rather than provide fact-based, convincing evidence for the bill’s necessity, Karhi was attempting to circumvent legal oversight, which indicated that there was a “strong concern” that the motivation for the bill was to stop KAN from being able to criticize the government.
Opposition MKs slammed Karhi, saying that rather than focus on things that the public cared about, such as freeing the hostages in Hamas captivity and countering the high cost of living, the government was spending its time attempting to suppress criticism.
MK Merav Cohen (Yesh Atid) linked the move to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing criminal trial, arguing that Netanyahu’s attempt to avoid criticism was the real motivator behind the bill.
Linor Deutsch, the CEO of Lobby 99, pointed out that commercial channels are controlled by wealthy individuals who have a vested interest in monetization, which makes it difficult to publish investigations or items that could damage their interests.
“Public broadcasting was the only place where we managed to publish investigations on public issues that had no place in commercial channels,” Deutsch said.
She added that she had thousands of examples of news items that were blocked from being shown on commercial channels and that KAN’s news branch was the only platform where they could be published.