IBA appeals to Supreme Court over Pizem murder broadcast

Since Ronny Ron and Marie Pizem were sentenced last month to life in prison, Channel 1 sees no reason for information to be withheld.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Rose Pizem 311 (photo credit: Israel Police [file])
Rose Pizem 311
(photo credit: Israel Police [file])
Since Ronny Ron and Marie Pizem were sentenced last month to life in prison for the murder of four-year-old Rose Pizem – Ron’s granddaughter and Pizem’s daughter – Itai Landsberg, who heads the documentary department at Channel One, sees no reason for information to be withheld from the public. Landsberg said Tuesday that he intends to feature the case in the channel’s True Story series.
His department has been working on the story for over two years, but has been prevented from airing it by a Central District Court ruling which Landsberg hopes the Supreme Court will overturn.
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The highly detailed appeal to the Supreme Court, submitted this week, notes that the public was involved in the search for the little girl when she went missing.
It was not yet known at that time that she was already dead.
“From the moment that her parents abandoned her, she became the child of the public,” said Israel Broadcasting Authority Director Dror Morer.
The Central District Court banned the broadcast on the grounds that it was an invasion of privacy, but the case received such widespread and in-depth coverage that the ruling simply did not make sense to the IBA, the agency said.
Landsberg said it is important for the public to be exposed to the period in which it was asked to help find Rose.
Morer and editor Tzipi Raz and producer Rachel Nechushtai have devoted a great deal of time toward reconstructing and documenting the investigation.
The IBA had hoped to broadcast the series immediately after Ron and Pizem had been sentenced, with the aim of preventing further incidents of this kind, Landsberg said. The case was to be aired in six episodes, disclosing the arrest, investigation and interrogation.
The Petah Tikva District Court sentenced Ron and Pizem, saying Pizem persuaded Ron to kill her daughter, whom he drowned in the Yarkon River in 2008.