Israel's Attorney General Urges Supreme Court to Block Communications Law
Israel's Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara, has formally asked the Supreme Court to issue a permanent interim order against a new communications law passed in July. The law, championed by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, was temporarily halted by the Supreme Court shortly after its approval pending further review.
In her appeal, Baharav-Miara sharply criticized the legislative process, describing it as "flawed" and containing an "extreme accumulation of substantive defects." She stressed the urgent need for judicial intervention to "stop the severe damage to the free communications market" that the law would cause.
The law's stated aim is to significantly reduce regulation, permit new news channels without government oversight, and eliminate the requirement to separate ownership of a TV channel from its news production company. However, the Attorney General's primary concerns focus on critical last-minute amendments that fundamentally altered the market's rules.
Baharav-Miara argued that these amendments, introduced suddenly without prior discussion, redefined "small licensee" to include any media entity with revenues up to two billion shekels. This change, she explained, would exempt major television channels from their obligation to broadcast news at all, or if they choose to, from the requirement to use a separate news company.
She warned that this effectively dismantles the safeguards ensuring the independence and reliability of news broadcasts in Israel, leading to the immediate cessation of regulation for the two oldest news programs on Israel's largest commercial channels, without any alternative provisions in place.
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