Jerusalem: Succumbing to public pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday assured the country that he will scrap a newly-passed controversial law that banned journalists working for Israel's public broadcaster from expressing their personal opinions on air.
"The prime minister believes that the ethical rules for journalists do not need to be enshrined in the primary legislation, and decided to bring an amendment to the clause,"
a statement from Netanyahu's office said on Sunday. A proposal to this effect is likely to be brought in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) as early as tomorrow, local media reported.
The controversial law, passed earlier this week, drew sharp criticism from journalists who accused the government of trying to suppress dissent.
The Israel Press Council has also urged the parliament to cancel the law, which stipulated that broadcasts should "avoid one-sidedness, prejudice, expressing personal opinions, giving grades and affixing labels, ignoring facts or selectively emphasising them not according to their newsworthiness."
Ofir Akunis, the minister responsible for the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), has already submitted his resignation on Friday, citing "lack of backing" for the new law.
Akunis had initially defended the controversial clause, saying that the law was designed to increase journalistic objectivity.
"It's possible the clause was not formulated clearly and sharply enough," he wrote on Facebook adding, "No one is trying to silence (the media)."
He also emphasised that the law only applies to newscasts. The clause applies to the current broadcaster IBA, which is set to be shut down in March 2016, and not to the new public broadcasting body that is due to replace it.
Meanwhile, the state comptroller has said he would investigate the government's conduct in abolishing the IBA and replacing it with a new state broadcasting corporation. Critics of the controversial dismantlement of the IBA have charged that Netanyahu, who holds the communications portfolio, was seeking to turn the media conglomerate into a political mouthpiece.
The move has also come under fire for the anticipated layoffs of most of the broadcaster's employees. The IBA was established in 1948 and held a monopoly on TV and radio broadcasting in Israel until the 1990s.
Since 1965, any Israeli household with a television set is obligated to pay an annual television tax, which helped fund the IBA. Today, the tax stands at NIS 345 (USD 90) per year.
The amendment approved early Thursday also abolished the TV tax from January 2015.
Comments
0 comment