Claudine Meyer, Jerusalem-based journalist
Bristling rooftop antennae in the old city of Jerusalem.
|
News doesn’t happen, it’s created. If there were no journalists, there wouldn’t be any news. There would simply be facts. Carlos
Luis Alvarez, |
Community media increasingly reflect the diversity of Israel’s population and cultural minorities. Above, market scene in Jerusalem.
Israel’s proliferating
community TV stations are becoming a power in the land. The enthusiasm of their staff
helps to compensate for lack of funding
The Hebrew
expression Lev Haïr means the “heart of the city”. It is also the name of a
community centre housed in one of the white stone buildings that are common in the
old neighbourhoods of west Jerusalem, where they were built at the end of the 19th
century to decongest the ancient city trapped within the walls.
The doors of Lev Haïr, one of 180 social welfare and leisure centres dotted
all over Israel, are open to everyone and everything, including the smells that waft
in from the nearby Machane Yehuda Market—the scent of coriander, fresh mint, guava
fruit and the plaited loaves of bread that Jews break at the start of the Sabbath.
The garbage trucks going up Agrippas Street rattle the windows. Yoram has closed
the blinds of his photography shop, and his two inseparable young assistants, Yoni
and Yossi, hurry off to shut themselves away for a couple of hours in a room at the
centre. Here, every Sunday evening, the 15 or so volunteer staff of the local community
TV station, set up three years ago, meet with their teacher, Gilad, a 34-year-old
ex-yoga instructor who is studying for his Ph.D in Hebrew poetry.
The younger members of the team, like 15-year-old Roï, are all keen to learn
about the technical side of television—how to hold a camera, record sound and do
lighting. The older ones are more concerned about what’s going into the next programme.
Because of lack of resources the programmes only last half an hour. They go out three
times a week on cable Channel 9.
Israel has had cable TV since 1988. Despite one of the most expensive monthly subscriptions
in the world (around $35), 70 per cent (920,000) of households have signed up for
it and have access to more than 40 channels, including Channel 9, which only carries
community TV.
The variety of topics tackled by the Lev Haïr team gives some idea of its inclusive
nature. Age differences are blithely ignored by the staff, which includes Yossi and
his mother Shoshana, Anat and his brother Alon, and Sylvia and Wolf, who have three
little blonde children. Such blood ties between staff members sometimes lead to family
wrangles, but a strong sense of camaraderie soon developed between lay and religious
people, locals and outsiders, emigrants from east and west, and Jews and Arabs. The
team is a kind of microcosm of Israeli society. Its common denominator is a desire
for self-expression.
No taboos
Everyone has had a
chance to take a year-long basic training course for 400 shekels instead of the usual
2,000 ($470). Over 26 sessions, they learn how to film and do montage and pick up
English jargon such as “shooting . . . pan . . . tilt up. . . tilt down”. They also
discuss supposedly taboo subjects including the three Ps—politics, pornography and
publicity. Some of the students have been keen enough to go on Sundays to the Zippori
training centre, tucked away in the heart of Jerusalem’s vast pine forest, and brush
up their skills.
Teams like this are appearing all over Israel. There are now 150 community television
stations set up either by neighbourhood groups or by cultural communities such as
Iranian Jews who speak Persian, newcomers to Israel from Ethiopia, or Russians who
have arrived in large numbers since the fall of the Soviet empire. For all of them,
community TV is a forum where people can say what they feel about all kinds of things,
from their taste in music to their distaste for bureaucracy.
This flowering, greatly helped by the steadily falling price of equipment, is what
local people want. Community TV fills in the gaps left by the national channels.
“These channels don’t fully take into account the diversity of the country’s population,
which contains microcosms and cultural minorities with strong sub-cultures,” says
Yehiel Limor, professor of communication science at Tel Aviv’s New School for Media
Studies. The role of local television is particularly important because “the local
press only stops being parochial when it brings out weekend editions,” Limor says,
referring to leisure magazines whose content is usually superficial.
Local
gripes
Local television tries
to “get things moving”, and on many occasions has been successful. In a three-minute
interview with the head of Bezek, the national telecommunications company, a team
from the Gonenim centre managed to speed up repairs to public phone boxes smashed
by vandals, after users had campaigned in vain for months. People living in the new
out-of-town neighbourhood of Ramot got a bus service after a televised interview
with the head of the Egged bus company.
These tussles with local authorities have become common. A team of reporters questioned
the mayor of the mixed Jewish-Arab town of Ramle about garbage collection. At first
he was hostile, but after a critical TV programme he improved the service. In exchange,
the reporters abstained from making a follow-up film, so the mayor could save face
and criticism from the townspeople did not spread.
Today, the Lev Haïr community TV team has decided to tackle the sensitive issue
of how the local market and night-time garbage collection disturb the lives of those
living nearby. Shlomi, who is something of a philosopher, is sitting on a pile of
broken crates and discarded fruit. He laughs and says he’ll read extracts from what
great thinkers have said about this kind of subject. Michal says the real issue is
that many of the workers are young Arab boys who stack the stalls with produce, throw
away empty boxes and swill down the paving-stones when squashed tomatoes and mangoes
have made them slippery. A martial arts enthusiast, he willingly talks about this
serious topic instead of his favourite subject, tokaido.
Micha, a choreographer, calls for a programme about the growth of the underground
culture. Sylvie suggests a vox pop fashion programme to find out what people think
of the famous “bob”, the little cloth hat worn by Zionist veterans. An amusing and
surrealist vox pop programme won the humour prize at Israel’s last annual community
TV contest and got its authors a weekend holiday at Shefaim kibbutz. The question
addressed in the programme was: “Do you prefer white or yellow stripes on pedestrian
crossings?”
Short
of shekels
The last item on the
agenda is money and a report on a demonstration held in Tel Aviv in mid-November
to persuade the communications ministry not to cut the team’s 20,000-shekel (around
$4,700) annual operating budget, a sum which would just about buy a camera. Additional
funding amounting to 10,000 shekels ($2,350) comes from various money-raising activities
held during the year. The proceeds go to each of the 80 member stations of an association
led by a tireless enthusiast and campaigner for communication rights, Zeevic Zaavi.
Zaavi, who is in his 50s, keeps a stock of community TV productions in his video
library and compiles from them a 30-minute weekly magazine for young people called
Alternatives, which Channel 9 has been broadcasting for nearly a year. The
ultimate aim is to broadcast for five hours each afternoon.
Meagre though they are, subsidies are vitally important for the Lev Haïr centre,
and Gilad, who has nearly finished training a second team, has a shopping list of
equipment he needs. Top of the list is a third camera, this time a digital one, and
a cutting room so as to avoid having to spend nearly 1,500 shekels ($350) a month
on paying staff at the Philippe Léon community centre, where two team members,
Yehuda and Walid, are currently working. One is an immigrant from France and the
other was born in Ras-el-Amud, east of Jerusalem.
The dream of course is to have a real studio, like the lucky people in the Baka neighbourhood
who can do studio interviews and broadcast live debates at election time.
Community TV can also try to find private sponsors, but Gilad has no business staff
who could spend time looking for would-be investors. He relies heavily on municipal
authorities who, Zaavi thinks, are “gradually coming to understand the importance
of neighbourhood TV in helping them to find out what citizens want and satisfy local
needs. Instead of carrying 95 per cent bad news,” he says, “these stations improve
the image of towns which often have problems. By doing this, they can help to attract
investors and skilled workers.”
