‘We Found Quite a Few Errors’: Legal Advisers Warn Against Advancing Broadcast Law

The race to complete legislation before the Knesset is dissolved continues, and it is especially evident in the Communications Committee chaired by MK Gila Gamliel-Distel Atbaryan. The latest development was reflected in a letter sent by attorney Pinchas Grut, one of the committee’s legal advisers, in which he sharply criticized the way the Broadcast Law is being advanced and voiced deep concern about harm to due process.

According to the letter, after committee chair Distel-Atbaryan announced on June 2 that substantive debates on the bill had ended, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi submitted a full draft of the bill to the legal advisers, so it could be used for MKs to file reservations. Because of the short time allotted, the legal team had to forgo a comprehensive and in-depth review, as is customary in such legislative processes, and instead limit itself mainly to technical comparisons and a basic check that the promised amendments had indeed been inserted.

According to attorney Grut, the legal team found many gaps between the changes the Communications Ministry had promised to make and what was actually incorporated. “We made it clear to the minister and to the committee chair, who later saw this themselves, that we had identified quite a few errors in the document that require clarifications and corrections, some of them significant corrections that require the ministry’s response, and which may even require a renewed reading of the wording with respect to them,” he wrote. In addition, the draft was not submitted in a standard, accepted legislative format, which requires considerable additional work.

The draft was distributed despite warnings from the legal advisers

The letter indicates that the early distribution of the draft was driven by fears that the Knesset would be dissolved. Karhi and committee chair Distel-Atbaryan demanded that the draft be handed over and distributed to committee members despite the legal advisers’ warnings, because of the political fear that the Knesset could be dissolved as soon as the following week.

The draft was circulated at a stage when the legal advisers had only managed an initial review of about 60 percent of the bill, and without being given the opportunity to check whether their comments had been incorporated into the final version. Since no “round of improvements” can be made to the wording after it is distributed without further committee debate, the legal advisers say that once the full review is completed, MKs will need additional time to submit reservations, and it is possible that brief additional hearings will also be required.

In the letter, attorney Grut states that he and his team cannot approve the draft that was distributed to committee members. “The net result of all that has been said above is that we cannot endorse the full draft sent on behalf of the Communications Ministry and distributed this morning to committee members ahead of the reservations and voting debates. This applies to the entire bill, both to the part we reviewed initially, but were not given the opportunity to address the incorporation of the comments and corrections we believed were required, and even more so to the part we did not review at all, not even initially.

“This is especially true with respect to this bill, which reached the Knesset before the internal government process had been completed, and as a result also without completion of the drafting work in the Justice Ministry, as required for government bills, and in light of the difficulties arising from the way the committee debates were managed and the flaws in the conduct of the legislative process in the committee, which the Knesset legal adviser has noted on several occasions, and which we ourselves have also addressed repeatedly during the debates,” he wrote.

Last week, the Knesset plenum approved splitting the Communications Law, which is the core of Minister Karhi’s broadcasting reform, in order to allow parts of it to advance before the Knesset is dissolved. The reform seeks to reshape the regulation of Israel’s television, radio and streaming services market. Among other things, it includes the creation of a single regulator to replace the Second Authority and the Cable and Satellite Council.

During the debates, concerns were raised over the way members of the new council would be appointed, in the sense that this could place oversight of television broadcasts under a body that could be political. Other disputed issues were the move from a licensing regime for channels to a registration regime, as well as the abolition of the structural separation between media companies and their news companies.

The legislative process itself was accompanied by fierce clashes in the Communications Committee. Professionals were attacked by MKs from all sides, and the law was advanced despite broad opposition from figures in the communications industry and from government professionals, including the Justice Ministry and the Regulatory Authority.

“An unusual attempt to shift responsibility”

Communications Committee chair Gila Distel-Atbaryan responded: “The letter circulated by the committee’s legal advisers is an unusual attempt to shift responsibility away from his own conduct and place it on others.

“The facts are simple and clear: in a conversation that took place last week with the Knesset legal adviser, it was made clear that the draft would be transferred to committee members on Thursday evening, or at the latest Friday morning. That commitment was not kept. The draft was transferred four days late, and only partially. Section 198 was also mistakenly omitted by the legal advisers’ team and was transferred only at a later stage. Even so, committee members were given enough time to submit reservations, including with respect to Section 198.

“It is especially regrettable that instead of focusing on completing the drafting work and helping the committee finish its task, the legal advisers are choosing to circulate an unusual document filled with claims about the legislative process, while themselves admitting that they have not completed the review they sought to carry out.”

It was also said that “it is inconceivable that someone who did not meet the deadlines he committed to, and in whose hands errors and glitches occurred in the wording, should now seek to delay the committee’s work once again by creating artificial crises at the last minute.”

The Communications Ministry did not respond.