Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Judges and Journalists and the Spaces In Between
- 1 Judicial Communication: (Re)Constructing Legitimacy in Argentina
- 2 Communication beyond the Judgments: The Australian High Court, Speaking for Itself, but Not Tweeting
- 3 Uncommon Transparency: The Supreme Court, Media Relations, and Public Opinion in Brazil
- 4 The “Uncomfortable Embrace”: The Supreme Court and the Media in Canada
- 5 Germany: The Federal Constitutional Court and the Media
- 6 The Supreme Court and Media in Ghana's Fourth Republic: An Analysis of Rulings and Interactions between Two Estates of the Realm
- 7 The Puzzle of Judicial Communication in Indonesia: The Media, the Court, and the Chief Justice
- 8 Carping, Criticizing, and Circumventing: Judges, the Supreme Court, and the Media in Israel
- 9 Judicial Communication in South Korea: Moving toward a More Open System?
- 10 Changing the Channel: Broadcasting Deliberations in the Mexican Supreme Court
- 11 Norway: Managed Openness and Transparency
- 12 Judicial Institutional Change and Court Communication Innovations: The Case of the UK Supreme Court
- 13 Symbiosis: The US Supreme Court and the Journalists Who Cover It
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
8 - Carping, Criticizing, and Circumventing: Judges, the Supreme Court, and the Media in Israel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Judges and Journalists and the Spaces In Between
- 1 Judicial Communication: (Re)Constructing Legitimacy in Argentina
- 2 Communication beyond the Judgments: The Australian High Court, Speaking for Itself, but Not Tweeting
- 3 Uncommon Transparency: The Supreme Court, Media Relations, and Public Opinion in Brazil
- 4 The “Uncomfortable Embrace”: The Supreme Court and the Media in Canada
- 5 Germany: The Federal Constitutional Court and the Media
- 6 The Supreme Court and Media in Ghana's Fourth Republic: An Analysis of Rulings and Interactions between Two Estates of the Realm
- 7 The Puzzle of Judicial Communication in Indonesia: The Media, the Court, and the Chief Justice
- 8 Carping, Criticizing, and Circumventing: Judges, the Supreme Court, and the Media in Israel
- 9 Judicial Communication in South Korea: Moving toward a More Open System?
- 10 Changing the Channel: Broadcasting Deliberations in the Mexican Supreme Court
- 11 Norway: Managed Openness and Transparency
- 12 Judicial Institutional Change and Court Communication Innovations: The Case of the UK Supreme Court
- 13 Symbiosis: The US Supreme Court and the Journalists Who Cover It
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
The judicial role is based on knowledge, responsibility and integrity. How can it be that although I am entitled to send people to jail I need to get special permission to deal with the media?
– Israeli judge, interview, April 12, 2007This statement by one of the senior judges in the Israeli court system reflects the increasing frustration felt by judges about current media policy that requires prior approval of the Chief Justice or the intervention of the spokesperson of the Judicial Authority for virtually all communication between judges and journalists. Despite changes in the organizational structure of the information services of the courts, and increasing concern for the image of the courts in the media and its potential effect on public trust in the courts, the basic policy of judicial distance from the media and the ethos of “letting the decisions speak for themselves” still dominate within the Israeli legal establishment (Peleg and Bogoch 2014).
This chapter will describe the current status of judicial-media relations in Israel, including the changes that have occurred over time, as well as the unintended consequences of the court's media policy. It is based on both publicly available material from the Judicial Authority's Information Services, as well as information conveyed to us by the spokesperson, press statements by judges and reporters, recent research on the media coverage of the court, and interviews conducted with 40 presently serving and retired judges and justices and 30 journalists. First, we will describe the Israeli judicial system and the research on the media coverage of the courts in this country. Next, we will present the structure and organization of the Judicial Authority Information Services, and the changes that have occurred over time in the court-media relationship, including the reaction of the Judicial Authority to technological changes. Finally we will discuss the unintended consequences of the court's media policy, and the dilemmas that these have triggered among both journalists and judges.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Justices and JournalistsThe Global Perspective, pp. 164 - 183Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017