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The Media in Israel

The Media in Israel. Notes for test 3 2009. The Israeli Media. 5.4 million Jews in Israel 1.3 million Arabs who stayed in former Palestine when it was turned into Israel on May 15, 1948 [ not counting the occupied West Bank

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The Media in Israel

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  1. The Media in Israel Notes for test 3 2009

  2. The Israeli Media • 5.4 million Jews in Israel • 1.3 million Arabs who stayed in former Palestine when it was turned into Israel on May 15, 1948 [not counting the occupied West Bank & Gaza which where there are 3.4 million Muslim and Christian Arabs]. Source: Jeff Goldberg (2008). Atlantic Monthly, May 2008, p. 35. Atlas of the Orient made by Tore Kielien

  3. Religion (for your info. not for test) • How Jews in Israel identify themselves religiouslyHaredi (ultra-orthodox), 7 percentreligious, 10 percenttraditional, religious, 14 percent[total Jews identifying themselves as religious, 31 percent]traditional, non-religious, 25 percentsecular, 44 percent.[total Jews identifying themselves as non-religious, 69 percent].How Arabs in Israel identify themselves religiouslyvery religious, 6 percentreligious, 44 percentnot so religious, 25 percentnonreligious, 25 percent. • June 13, 2007 -- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv, Loneliness, religion and the Central Bureau of Statistics, June 13, 2007 http://israel-like-this-as-if.blogspot.com/2007/06/loneliness-religion-and-central-bureau.html

  4. Demographics 40,000 Israelis in Silicon Valley (and more than a half million across the U.S. (Goldberg, 2008, p. 40). Israel received about 1 million educated Soviet Jews in the 1980s. That number strengthened the high-tech industry but also had an effect on the language of the press (Russian publications flourished).

  5. Israel has twelve foreign-language dailies, with the largest number, four, in Russian, two in Romanian, one in Arabic, one in English, German, Hungarian, Polish and Yiddish. Some newspapers also have English editions.

  6. The Israeli Print Press • Israel since its founding in 1948 has been a country of immigrants. This immigration profile is reflected in the Press (Caspi and Limor, 1999: p. 69).

  7. Israeli newspapers • Israeli Newspapers are quite diverse and go from the very liberal to very conservative. • http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/israel.htm • http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3083,00.html (Yediot Ahronot) • http://www.haaretz.com/ Haaretz (liberal) • http://globes-online.com/ (Globes- Business) • Jerusalem Post (English) (more conservative than Ha’aretz) • http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/Page/IndexPhoto&cid=1171894495344

  8. Religious Israelis issue their own papers because they feel that the secular press does not reflect their values. Haredi [religious] papers, for example, deny the principle of the public’s right to know, which has become the motto of the secular press. “We will provide information only if it is not deleterious to our principles,” says the editor-in-chief of Hamodia (Levi 1989, p. 247 quoted by Caspi and Limor 1999, p. 69).

  9. The Israeli press has passed through several stages of development in terms of: 1) Ownership, 2) Political control 3) Political content. 1) Ownership: The early Israeli press wasowned and financed by political parties. The party press later gave way to the private press (Caspi 1999: 67-68).

  10. Changes in Content over time 2) Political control: The Israeli press was controlledby political parties. The parties also appointed the editors of their respective newspapers.

  11. Changes in Content over Time 3) The political content of the Israeli press has grown more sophisticated over time. During the early years of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli press was too dependent on the Israeli army spokesperson for its news and interpretation of events and did not get the Palestinian point of view (Halabi 1981, p. 56).

  12. But the surprise Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal in the October 1973 War to regain Egyptian territory, and later, the inaccurate statements made by Israeli spokespersons about Lebanon when Israel invaded it in 1982, convinced Israeli editors that they should no longer allow “army assurances, army assumptions, and army censors to deter our pens,” as former editor of the Jerusalem Post, Erwin Frenkel put it (1994, p. 76).

  13. The 1973-1982 period also saw a decline in centralized party power, and a rise in importance of the private press and public opinion, and by necessity, a redefinition of the role of the Israeli journalists vis a vis the Israeli government and polity. For some papers, Israeli nationalism became less important than telling the truth. Those changes benefited Palestinians under occupation because Israeli journalists started using Palestinian sources about what was happening in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. What Palestinians could not publish because of the Israeli censors was passed on to Israeli West Bank beat reporters and was published in the Hebrew press, then translated into Arabic as if it were Israeli in origin.

  14. This shift improved the level of objectivity of Israeli news transmitted to the foreign (American and European) press, whose members depended heavily on Israeli sources and stringers between 1967-1987. The fairer coverage of the occupied territories was seen in the extensive coverage of the Palestinian Uprising that started in December 1987. (Najjar, O. "Palestinian Journalists and Israeli West Bank Beat Reporters: From Enemies to 'Colleagues,'" AEJMC, International Communication Division, Atlanta, Georgia, August 12, 1994.

  15. The Israeli reporter for Ha’aretz, Amira Hass’s dispatches from the Palestinian territories have made her, along with Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab, among the 50 recipients of the World Press Freedom Hero Award given by the International Press Institute in 2000. IPI selects 50 World Press Freedom Heroes (2000) http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/10075

  16. Important Issues in Israeli Broadcasting point to an on-going discussion on the nature of the Israeli state. Is it religious, or is it secular? Is it better to have a political party press or a commercial press? Should the government control radio? Should the government control TV? Should religious parties determine content?

  17. Radio: “The Voice of Israel,” established in 1948, had its origins in the Palestine Broadcasting Service established by the British in Ramallah in 1936. That station had Arabs and Jews transmitting in their respective languages. In 1951, Israel’s foreign language broadcasting was extended to cover several languages to serve its immigrant population and Jews abroad.

  18. Initially, the government was determined to keep its monopoly of broadcasting. In the mid-1960s, the government controlled the Israeli army radio and the educational TV, while state radio and television became part of the public system.

  19. Starting in 1973, however, some challenged government monopoly by resorting to off-shore broadcasting. The first such station was the “Voice of Peace,” 1973-1993. The offshore vessels represent various Israeli constituencies, from music-only stations, to religious stations whose purpose was to “return people to religion.” Arutz 2000, an ultra religious and Sephardic Zealot outlet was operating a land-based pirate station in South Tel-Aviv but claiming

  20. to be in international waters. Israel’s Second Radio and TV authority issued a complaint against Arutz 2000. Police raided the land-based transmitter in June, 1995 and when it resumed operations, raided it 6 times by the end of July. The station then went off-shore. By the 1990s, fourteen regional and 50 pirate radio stations went into operation Arutz put the ship to rest in 2003. Now it is on the Internet: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/

  21. Legal commercial local radio began only in 1995. A controversy has pitted Arutz 7 against Israeli regional radio stations that protested when the parliament legalized pirate stations that had been in operation continuously for at least 5 years as of January 1, 1999. The two meeting these criteria are Arutz 7 and Shas’s radio 2000, both religious Jewish stations. But immediately after the law was approved, petitions were submitted to Israel’s High Court claiming that the law “rewarded criminals and discriminated against the legal operations of Israel’s existing regional stations” which had to put up large financial guarantees and compete against other bidders in order to obtain licenses. Arutz 7 argued that it had to put up large sums to keep a ship off-shore.

  22. Israel broadcasts in Arabic in order not to have its Arab population, and later, people in the occupied territories, depend only on the broadcasts of the surrounding Arab areas. That used to work in the past, but not any more because of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya (heavy on 24-hour news) and MBC and LBC (Lebanese and Saudi stations, heavy on entertainment).

  23. Television in Israel Israel started TV broadcasting in 1968 in response to a report that lauded the medium’s educational potential as a way of integrating Israel’s new immigrants into the culture, as well as a mechanism that would prevent Arabs who remained in Israel in 1948 and Arabs Israel occupied in 1967 from being exposed only to the televisions of the surrounding Arab countries. (Jordan TV started broadcasting in 1968). Egypt already had a TV.

  24. Israeli Television was controlled first by the government, and then by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (IBA) which is controlled by a board of directors composed of political appointees. TV was initially financed from license fees but now accepts paid ads.

  25. The first venture to break away from government monopoly came from the owner of Odelia TV, who started broadcasting in June 1981. By July, the government had prepared a hastily proposed anti-offshore broadcasting law. On 29th November the station was temporarily closed. On November 30, the anti-offshore law came into force. Israel refused to cooperate with off-shore broadcasters except in cases of emergency.

  26. There was a great deal of resistance to the introduction of a second TV channel in Israel. Initially, National Religious Party Ministers blocked even the discussion of the issue. In 1990, Israel finally accepted the introduction of the Second Channel, “22 years after the inception of television in Israel, 13 years after the major parties included the demand in their party platforms, and nearly 4 years after the law was first proposed.”

  27. Experimental Broadcasts of the second channel, however, had started in 1986 in order to allow Israel to “seize” frequencies for the second channel before other countries of the region started using them.

  28. The Second channel turned commercial in 1993. Cable television started broadcasting in January 1991. The Cable Television Council divided the country into 31 areas. As a result, Israel is covered well by this local network.

  29. Radio and TV • Kol Israel in EnglishKol Yisrael - Reshet Bet - HebrewGaley Zahal - HebrewIsrael Broadcasting Authority- HebrewIsrael Broadcasting Authority - Channel 1News- HebrewIsrael Channel 2 Television - HebrewIsrael TV Channel 2 News- HebrewSport Chanel- Arutz 5- HebrewRadioHazakArutz ShevaRadio Emtsa Haderech- HebrewRadiusRadio Tel Avivbu RadioGalatzSource: http://www.israeliconsulate.org/News&Media/mediafavorites.htm

  30. Test 3 Review Questions How is Israel’s immigration profile reflected in the press? When did the influence of the Israeli political parties decline? (dates). Who appointed the editors of those papers? How was the early Israeli press financed and controlled? Why do religious Israelis publish their own newspapers? Which linguistic group has the largest number of papers (after Hebrew)? Which two events made Israeli papers more independent from the army spokesperson? When was Israeli radio established? (date) When was Israeli TV established? (date) Who attempted to block the introduction of a second TV channel? How long did it take to get a second Israeli TV channel?

  31. The political content of the Israeli press has grown more sophisticated over time. Explain what it was like and how it has changed. Important Issues in Israeli Broadcasting point to an on-going discussion on the nature of the Israeli state. List the type of questions asked. How was Israeli TV initially financed and how is it financed now? When did the Israeli second channel turn commercial? (date) Short essay question: The Israeli press has passed through several stages of development in terms of: 1) ownership, 2) political control 3) content. Explain the changes that took place in each of those three stages.

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