In the early hours of Friday morning, after months of one of the Knesset’s most contentious legislative battles in recent memory, the coalition pushed Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s sweeping media overhaul through its final readings, expanding the government’s ability to influence Israel’s broadcast media right before parliament adjourned for its pre-election recess.

Immediately following its passage, the law was challenged at the High Court of Justice, which on Sunday froze implementation of the provisions scheduled to take immediate effect. Karhi then called on the government to defy the court.

The law establishes a new broadcast regulator whose members would largely be appointed by the communications minister or officials subordinate to him. This regulator is grant sweeping new powers, including setting the ethical codes governing news organizations, collecting television ratings data, and imposing fines of up to 1% of a broadcaster’s annual revenue — potentially millions of shekels. Financial penalties are currently generally limited to tens of thousands of shekels.

At the same time, it would remove longstanding safeguards intended to shield news organizations from political and commercial influence by abolishing restrictions on cross-ownership and the requirement that television news companies operate independently of their commercial owners.

The law forms the centerpiece of the coalition’s broader campaign to weaken the media sector, including Karhi’s parallel legislation to first dismantle and then seize the budget of the Kan public broadcaster and the bid to shut down Army Radio.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have long maintained an adversarial stance toward much of Israel’s media-sphere, with the premier largely blackballing stations that refuse to toe the government line. Both he and senior ministers frequently accuse Israeli media of bias against them or of acting against the interests of the state. “Fake news” has been a favorite phrase of the prime minister.

Critics argue the overhaul is intended to hand greater control of news organizations to a government that has long portrayed much of Israel’s media as politically hostile just months before a national election.

Karhi has said that Netanyahu personally tasked him with advancing the overhaul, even though the prime minister is barred under his conflict-of-interest arrangement from involvement in matters that could affect his ongoing corruption trial, which includes allegations that he sought favorable media coverage in exchange for regulatory benefits.

While much of the public debate has centered on what the law would do to Israel’s media, Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, argues that the law’s target is not really Israel’s competing press outlets, and that its significance is actually rooted in what it reveals about the collapse of democratic norms in the Knesset.

The committee established to debate the law was repeatedly accused by the Knesset legal adviser of flouting established legislative procedures, ignoring legal advice and introducing substantial amendments late in the legislative process, despite warnings that these irregularities could themselves imperil the law.

Shwartz Altshuler composed the code of ethics for Israel’s Public Broadcasting Corporation. Since 2023, she has overseen the ethical tribunal of Israel’s Journalists’ Association, and she testified before the Knesset committee that debated the legislation. She argues that the process by which the law was enacted was unprecedented and crucially exposed the vulnerability of Israel’s institutional safeguards when confronted with a government determined to bypass them.

“Not for the first time, but in a very clear way, you are seeing that if someone wants to abuse the system, the rule of law and procedural norms don’t matter. If someone wants to destroy, they will succeed,” she said.

Karhi, a far-right lawmaker in Netanyahu’s Likud party who has sought to fundamentally reshape Israel’s media landscape, took an unusually hands-on role in steering the legislation through the Knesset despite serving as a cabinet minister rather than an MK.

He has........

© The Times of Israel