Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recanted his support for a “Public Broadcasting Corporation” that isn’t subject to public ethics. MK Rabbi Israel Eichler said: at the “Hanegbi Committee I have already demanded the requirement to subject public broadcasting to ethics and minimal rules which are mentioned in the “Nakdi document”. This is the only way to stop the violation of the Haredi community and others.

The “Nakdi document” establishes rules for public broadcasting. It prohibits unilateralism and a broadcaster taking a personal opinion on controversial issues, without adequate disclosure.

MK Rabbi Eichler was not satisfied with only the recommendation and was able to pass the “Nakdi law” in the Knesset plenum. The Prime Minister panicked and abolished the law immediately within a few weeks.

The new law, which establishes a new “Public Broadcasting Corporation” has no binding ethical rules and carries a budget of a billion NIS and hundreds of jobs. Therefore, in order to protect the public that is maligned by the media, MK Rabbi Israel Eichler demanded that they adapt the ethical standards of the “Nakdi document”. This is a critical time for communication, but a time of grace for the Protection of the haredi community, its greatest victim.

“After the government and the Knesset have lost the impact on public finances flowing to the “Public Broadcasting Corporation” we must apply rules of ethics to prevent violence and incitement in the public media. We must not let the rulers of the new corporation, evade the rules of ethics and we are required to protect the citizens from the media dictatorship.

“There is no ‘public broadcasting’ in a country that has no ‘public uniform’. The public is made up of a mosaic of people. There are a lot of opinions and attitudes. I expect people who preach openness and tolerance, will be willing to act upon what they preach. We cannot give control over the microphone to people who refuse to accept minimal public ethics.

“We must stand up for the public interest and put an end to the hostility, arrogance and degrading treatment of Haredim in the Israeli media”.

“Such an absurd situation does not exist in any other country in the world country in the world – that the State and its citizens pay the salaries of those who viciously fight against them. It does not happen in democratic countries and neither in dictatorships. Israeli media is not free, it is completely controlled, not by the government or by the public, but by a small group of hostile people who took over the microphones all in the name of freedom of expression and freedom of the press – said MK Rabbi Israel Eichler.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)