The legal battle surrounding the media law promoted by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, which was approved last July, has reached a boiling point. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara appealed to the High Court of Justice yesterday (Thursday) with an urgent request for a permanent interim order to prevent the law from taking effect, following a temporary order previously issued by the Supreme Court. In her official filing, the Attorney General harshly criticizes the legislative process, describing it as flawed and saturated with procedural defects that necessitated intervention by the highest judicial authority.
According to a report by the website 'ice', the original law was purportedly aimed at reducing regulation in the Israeli media market, including lowering barriers for establishing new news channels and removing the structural separation between channel ownership and its news company. However, Baharav-Miara’s core arguments focus on dramatic, last-minute amendments made to the law’s provisions without sufficient factual basis or procedural transparency.
At the heart of the dispute is a change in the legal definition of a "minor licensee." According to the Attorney General, expanding this definition to include any media entity generating up to two billion shekels in revenue fundamentally changes the market's rules. She contends that the practical implication is that all licensees under the Second Authority Law will fall under this category. Consequently, major television channels could be exempt from the mandate to air news broadcasts, and if they choose to do so, they would no longer be required to operate them through a separate news company.
Baharav-Miara emphasizes that this constitutes the dismantling of the central safeguard designed to protect journalism from the influence of capital and government. She warns of an immediate threat to the two largest and longest-standing news broadcasts in Israel, noting that the legislature failed to establish alternative arrangements to guarantee their editorial independence and reliability. The petition stresses that the law requires re-examination due to the severe potential harm to a free media market. The petitioner believes that without High Court intervention, these changes would collapse the critical separation wall necessary to ensure journalistic work free from external pressures. The current legal debate raises fundamental questions regarding how regulatory decisions are made within the government and the scope of oversight required for major broadcasting entities in the country.