Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2014
Poster Presentation
Israel’s Media System
Robert Lee Williams
Faculty Mentor: Yong Tang
Journalism
Media is a fundamental and complex process in the world. It varies from country to
country, depending on its press laws, government censorship, corporate controls, and
religious influences. Scholars constantly ask the following question: Who controls the
media, religious Leaders, the government, giant corporations, or average citizens? The
purpose of this paper is to identify the dominant group that controls Israel’s media
entities.
In this country with the only democratically elected government in the Middle East, there
are different ways media outlets reach the people, from newspapers, magazines, to
radio and television, and finally the Internet. After digging into extensive primary and
secondary sources such as Jewish Virtual Library, this project finds that all entities such
as religious leaders, the government, giant corporations, and average citizens play a
role in gathering and dissemination of information within and beyond the Israeli national
borders.
This article finds that while media is free government and conglomerates media plays a
dominant role. In addition, this article examines how both Hebrew and Arabic are used
in media. The proposed research will use press freedom ratings from Freedom House,
Reporters without Borders, IREX and Committee to Protect Journalist to identify where
Israel stands in terms of a country’s ability to protect and enhance journalism