Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and MK Marina Solodkin (Kadima) raised questions
about the appropriateness of the Knesset Channel’s content, after a ranking of
MKs’ fashion sense was
aired on television on Tuesday.
“The Knesset
Channel is not supposed to intervene in matters of MKs’ personal style and
taste. It seems to me that the channel deviated from its purpose and mandate,
and should examine its behavior,” Rivlin said on Wednesday.
The Knesset
speaker explained that the channel is meant to be an additional platform to
publicize parliamentary and political activity, and increases transparency in
legislation.
“The show is in bad taste,” Rivlin said on
Wednesday.
“The Knesset is not the Knesset Channel’s censor and is
careful not to intervene in its content, but there are some topics that are not
the channel’s job to cover.”
Part of the Knesset speaker’s
responsibilities is to regulate the Knesset Channel; however, he does not
control its content.
Rivlin sent Knesset Channel director-general Uri Paz
a letter by MK Marina Solodkin (Kadima), who was the target of some of the
program’s sharpest barbs.
The Knesset Channel responded that, in
cooperation with the Fashion Channel, they are giving MKs “advice about their
outer appearance by first-class Israeli fashion experts,” adding that
Dress Code
is an “original and unique segment.”
On Tuesday, following an article in
The Jerusalem Post revealing the Knesset Channel- Fashion Channel collaboration
on a weekly segment called
Dress Code ranking the best-dressed and most
sartorially challenged parliamentarians, Solodkin wrote to Rivlin that she found
the new program to be inappropriate.
“There is no accounting for taste,
but even if my taste in clothing does not match that of the show’s producers and
participants, they do not have a right to disparage me,” she wrote.
In
addition, Solodkin criticized the Knesset Channel for “focusing on MKs’ style of
dress and not the content of their work.”
The Kadima MK pointed out that
the segment showed her giving a speech in the plenum about a bill meant to
increase the punishment for those who try to stop population groups – such as
women, Arabs or new immigrants – from voting. The legislation was inspired by a
case in which ultra-Orthodox women in Mea She’arim were stopped from voting in
the same polling place as men.
“Apparently, to the show’s producers and
participants, the jacket I wore was a bigger problem than the one my bill seeks
to solve,” she wrote.
The first 10-minute episode of
Dress Code, which is
hosted by model Moran Gross and features stylist Lilach Cohen and fashion
columnist Chen Avni, aired on Tuesday night.
For nearly three of those
minutes, the program mocked Solodkin’s clothing and hairstyle.
MK Miri
Regev (Likud) was also targeted by Cohen and Avni.