EYE ON THE MEDIA: Kill the white elephant

By DAVID BAR-ILLAN

(October 29) The Israel Broadcasting Authority is the biggest white elephant in Israel. Considering the fierce competition for this title, this is no small achievement.

All government agencies are wasteful: Bureaucracies always grow faster than the population they serve, and they invariably consider featherbedding a birthright and efficiency a dirty word. Which is why privatization of services as well as government-run industries has become the order of the day in most enlightened countries.

But the IBA is beyond salvation. It cannot be privatized, for the simple reason that no one is insane enough to buy it. Nor should it be. It should be shut down.

The idea of state-owned broadcasting, patterned after the BBC, was conceived under the British Mandate. But the world has changed since then. Even the exalted BBC has become inefficient, wasteful, crisis-ridden and anachronistic. The networks are now entertainment providers, and government has no business being in show business.

The IBA is a classic example of bureaucracy gone wild, a Frankenstein monster. It produces little original material, yet it has close to 1,900 full-time employees, plus 750 temporary workers. Hundreds on its payroll do not even bother showing up for work. The excuse for keeping them is that there is no money for severance pay. Salaries are low, but most work is done on overtime, which applies both to early morning and evening work. Some basic salaries are for a four-day week, which means that anything beyond that is overtime.

This army of employees works with deteriorating equipment, maintained expensively and wastefully against all principles of cost economy and long-range budgeting. The computer system is at least a decade behind the times.

No office anywhere is exempt from infighting and personal vendettas, but the situation at IBA is nothing less than a nightmare. A majority on the politically appointed board of directors is trying to get rid of the director-general, who in turn hopes that the Barak government will not hold it against him that he is a Netanyahu appointee. This is no way to run a broadcasting service.

Personal quarrels breed spiteful actions on the part of both management and workers. Pique and caprice are the order of the day. Crews unhappy with out-of-town accommodations have been known to return to base without covering the assigned story. Sudden petulance has prevented coverage of dramatic news events. At budget time, management - in a fit of ostentatious frugality - arbitrarily prohibits the travel of technicians, making broadcasts incomplete and defective.

Whether as a result of indifference, resentment of management or sheer incompetence, the technical quality of Israel Radio and television broadcasts borders on the amateurish - from sound adjustments during telephone interviews on radio, to camera work and atrociously translated subtitles on television. This week alone, sound was lost at least twice during television news broadcasts.

Earlier this month, the IBA's comptroller bitterly complained in an internal letter about the fact that "The IBA is perhaps the only body in the state in which there are no instruments to ensure effective control of the financial activity of the executive branch." The result is predictable: Despite the tumescent budget, enormous annual deficits occur with inexorable regularity.

WHAT MAKES the situation particularly galling is that car-radio and television owners are forced to pay for an outrageously overblown payroll rather than for attractive programs. The public pays almost NIS 500 million a year for television permits, and NIS 150 million for car radios. Yet practically all the IBA's television programs have lower ratings than those of Channel 2, which is run far more economically.

Advocates of state-run broadcasting cite the fact that it is free of commercial influences. Since it serves "the people" rather than the manufacturers of diapers and cellular phones, it need not worry about ratings and pander to the lowest common denominator.

These advocates cite documentaries produced by Israel Television, which no commercial station would produce for reasons of cost economy. But the budgetary constraints caused by the inflated payroll are making such programs too expensive even for the profligate IBA. And when they are produced, they reflect the political biases of leftist ideologues who seem to gravitate to government-controlled media.

This does not mean that commercial channels are free of leftist leanings. But programs presented under government auspices have greater impact. The series Tekuma, produced by the IBA for Israel's 50th anniversary, reflected the self-flagellation of post-Zionist apparatchiks rather than the facts of Israel's history. But it was perceived as an official government product.

If nothing else, such documentaries prove that the intellectual level of government subsidized programs is no higher than that of commercial soap operas, except that they are less technically proficient, more expensive, more boring, and more addicted to subliminal political messages than the Sergei Eisenstein movies of the 1930s.

Similar problems afflict the news programs. The main reason the government wanted to keep total control of broadcasting during the state's first three decades was that it feared privately run news. The attitude reflected not only the highly centralized approach of the socialist Labor governments, but the anxieties of a state under siege.

Such an attitude today, in the era of Internet, cable channels and satellite television is laughable. That there is hardly any difference between news broadcast on the public and private channels should dispel any notions that a government-owned news service is either necessary or desirable.

Not that Israel's situation is identical to that of any other state. Conditions unique to this country do require special attention. Newcomers should have programs in their own languages. Jews in the Diaspora and others who feel a special relationship with Israel should have access to Israeli news on radio and the Internet. And news from Israel must continue to be beamed to Israel's neighbors, who have learned that the only reliable news in Arabic, Persian and other regional languages emanates from Israel.

Under the present circumstances, these highly valuable broadcasts are, regrettably, the first to suffer budgetary cuts. Since they cannot be lucrative, a small government authority should keep them alive. But the rest of the IBA kingdom should be shut down, its properties sold, and its workers compensated.

The 21st century begins in 14 months. By then, Israeli taxpayers should be liberated from onerous IBA fees, and offered the multiple choices of open airwaves and media pluralism. The days of government-owned broadcasting are over. Not a minute too soon.