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6 Comm. L. & Pol'y 1 (2001)

handle is hein.journals/comulp6 and id is 1 raw text is: COMMUNICATION LAW AND POLICY Volume 6 Winter 2001 Number 1 Copyright © 2001 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. FIFTY YEARS IN A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE: NEWS MEDIA AND MILITARY CENSORSHIP IN ISRAEL HILLEL NOSSEK* YEHIEL LIMOR** One of the characteristics of democratic regimes is the absence of censorship and other prepublication control over the content of the news media. Although the state of Israel is considered to be a democratic state, military censorship has been in operation since the nation's establishment in 1948. The central question discussed in this article is: What are the circumstances and processes that began and preserve this anomalous situation, one that has no direct equivalent in any other democratic society? An examination of the reciprocal relations in Israel between the political establishment, with military censorship as its method of media control, and the media, finds that it is not a one-way relationship but a kind of marriage, not a marriage of love, but one of convenience. Marriages of this type last for decades, mainly because all the alternatives available to the couple are worse than that of remaining together. It seems that all parties to the unique Israeli censorship arrangement are reconciled to live in a framework of flexible, loosely defined boundaries. Democratic regimes are characterized by, among other traits, the absence of censorship and other control over the content of the mass *Senior Lecturer, New School of Media Studies, College of Management, Tel-Aviv, Israel. **Senior Teacher, Department of Communication, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel.

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