Nakdi Report
Encyclopedia
The Nakdi Report, also known as the Nakdi Document or as the Nakdi guidelines is the document that provides ethical guidelines for use in Israel's broadcasting industry. Published as the Guidelines for Coverage of News and Current Affairs in 1995, the doctrine was first introduced in 1972 by the Israel Broadcasting Authority
Israel Broadcasting Authority
Israel Broadcasting Authority is Israel's state broadcasting network.It grew out of the radio station Kol Yisrael, which made its first broadcast as an independent station on . The name of the organisation operating Kol Yisrael was changed to Israel Broadcasting Service in 1951...

. It is named for its original author, Nakdimon Rogel.

Patterned after the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

’s Editorial Guidelines (previously, the Producer Guidelines), the Document currently consists of 161 clauses and contains a comprehensive code of ethics and practice for journalists working within the IBA. It is also applied to journalists in private broadcasting, though it is not legally binding. Since it was drawn up in 1972, the document has been revised four times - in 1979, 1985, 1995 and 1998 - and expanded to four times its original size.

Fairness and legal challenges

It is one of the few national ethics codes to retain a version of the Fairness Doctrine
Fairness Doctrine
The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission , introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission's view, honest, equitable...

. This is in addition to notions of impartiality drawn from similar European codes, which require the Authority itself to refrain from broadcasting editorials. Fairness, however, goes beyond mere impartiality: in order to "ensure the public’s right to receive full and reliable information alongside balanced and
varied opinions", journalists are required to "solicit opposing opinion, fairly notify the public if comment was refused, and avoid becoming 'tools of response' for 'professional reaction teams.'"

The requirements to ensure varied opinion - repeated elsewhere in the document as an enjoinder "that the pool of commentators must be varied", has caused several notable lawsuits to be filed against the IBA. Three in the 1980s were particularly notable: the first was against the landmark 1981 television miniseries The Pillar of Fire. Brought by a group of Israelis of Sephardic descent who felt that the dramatised history of Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 unfairly minimised their communities' contribution to the movement, the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of Israel
The Supreme Court is at the head of the court system and highest judicial instance in Israel. The Supreme Court sits in Jerusalem.The area of its jurisdiction is all of Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. A ruling of the Supreme Court is binding upon every court, other than the Supreme...

 indicated that in this case fairness was "irrelevant"; broadcast could not be censored, but "another aspect of the issue should be presented". In 1982, a decision by the IBA to ban interviews with any supporters of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in the West Bank and Gaza
Israeli-occupied territories
The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory seized by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria...

 was struck down; this case was the making of the now-legendary civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

 lawyer Amnon Zichroni. And in 1984, Rabbi Meir Kahane
Meir Kahane
Martin David Kahane , also known as Meir Kahane , was an American-Israeli rabbi and ultra-nationalist writer and political figure. He was an ordained Orthodox rabbi and later served as a member of the Israeli Knesset...

 submitted that a similar ban on broadcasting his political statements be struck down. In a much-studied ruling that recognised racist speech was also protected speech, the High Court of Justice
Supreme Court of Israel
The Supreme Court is at the head of the court system and highest judicial instance in Israel. The Supreme Court sits in Jerusalem.The area of its jurisdiction is all of Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. A ruling of the Supreme Court is binding upon every court, other than the Supreme...

 attempted to curtail the Zichroni vs IBA somewhat: Kach
Kach and Kahane Chai
Kach was a far-right political party in Israel. Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the early 1970s, and following his Jewish nationalist ideology , the party entered the Knesset in 1984 after several electoral failures...

 was permitted a "right of reply" if its positions were misrepresented, but it could not demand that its platform be broadcast, and nor could it demand the right of reply to criticism.

Recent concerns

More recently, the guidelines have faced a sustained barrage of criticism. After the 1996 revision appeared, a study by Yitzhak Roeh, a media studies academic at HUJI
HUJI
Huji or HUJI may refer to:*Hebrew University of Jerusalem, university in Israel*Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Islamic fundamentalist organization*Hukou system , household registration system in mainland China and the Republic of China...

 called it an "anachronism" and "irrelevant" Since then, right-wing groups have frequently used the Nakdi Document as a basis for documentation of what they see as media bias
Media bias
Media bias refers to the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the...

; the two most high-profile incidents have been litigation surrounding the broadcast of Avishai Raviv
Avishai Raviv
Avishai Raviv was an agent of Israel's Shin Bet or Shabak, Israel's domestic intelligence service whose mission was to monitor the activities of right-wing extremists. His code name was 'Champagne'....

's "swearing-in ceremony" with Eyal
Eyal
Eyal is a kibbutz in the Centre District of Israel close to the Green line. It is under the jurisdiction of the Drom HaSharon Regional Council-Geography:...

 at Baruch Goldstein
Baruch Goldstein
Baruch Kopel Goldstein was an American-born Jewish Israeli physician and mass murderer who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounding another 125....

's grave, and the campaign to get rid of Gabi Gazit
Gabi Gazit
Gabi Gazit is an Israeli journalist, television personality and radio host.Gabi Gazit , born in Czechoslovakia to a religious family, grew up in Kfar Yehoshua, a moshav in the Jezreel Valley. He did his military service in the Israel Defence Forces in a Sayeret special forces unit...

, whom they saw as serially breaking "the policies of public radio".

Although at least one study has concluded that rather than being responses to political stimuli, the various revisions of the Document have resulted in a "crystallization and implementation of normative ethical guidelines for Israeli public broadcasting", criticism that the Document contains at least some inherent bias continues to be leveled. Recently, concern that the language expected of the Israeli media was not sufficiently neutral included the complaint that the phrase "East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem or Eastern Jerusalem refer to the parts of Jerusalem captured and annexed by Jordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and then captured and annexed by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War...

" were prohibited by the guidelines.

There have also been concerns that the Document is not detailed enough; following Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....

's incapacitation, its ability to provide guidance balance between the private matter of his health and the public's right to know was found wanting. Similarly, the strictures against "melodrama" in factual broadcasting and against filming of funerals contrary to a family's wishes have been problematic: "Sterile coverage of terrorist attacks and bereavement will not get across the dimension we need to get - the emotional dimension," according to a television executive quoted in Ha'aretz.
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