'Ban publishing exit polls before voting ends'

Initiative the result of allegations against the Israeli media and the way it covered the primary.

By SHELLY PAZ
livni votes 224 88 (photo credit: AP [file])
livni votes 224 88
(photo credit: AP [file])
MK Yisrael Hasson (Israel Beiteinu) will hold a special session of the Economic Affairs Committee on Wednesday to discuss banning the publication of exit polls while the ballot boxes are open for voting. Hasson chairs the panel. "The meeting was set following the profound questions that have arisen regarding the media's conduct and its influence on several crucial events in the Israeli reality; the disengagement [from Gaza in 2005], the Goldwasser-Regev-Kuntar swap deal [in July] and the Kadima primary last week," Hasson said on Sunday. It was important to examine whether the media had became the decision-maker, he said. "In other words, to check whether the watchdog of democracy has turned against the landlord." Hasson's initiative is a result of allegations against the Israeli media and the way it covered the primary, accusations that went as far as to say that new Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni won the race thanks to media coverage that was clearly biased in her favor. It has also been claimed that the publication of exit polls while the ballot boxes were still open, as well as in the days immediately before the primary, influenced the final result. Also on Sunday, Likud MKs Gilad Erdan and Moshe Kahlon announced on they would soon introduce a bill that would ban the publications of polls in the two weeks before general elections and party primaries. "Some would say that the intensive coverage of abducted soldiers increases the pressure on the decision-makers, who give in and agree to pay high prices, but that is impossible to quantify," Erdan told The Jerusalem Post. He added that he expected decision-makers to be able to withstand such pressure. "However, the general public can be influenced by polls, trends and the general mood that is created by the media. "The media creates trends and they obviously affect the voters, who lie to pollsters and don't feel comfortable revealing their real choice, and sometimes they are even discouraged by the polls and don't even bother to go and exercise their rights at the ballot box," Erdan said. Dr. Yariv Ben-Eliezer, director of media studies at the Lauder School of Government at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, said that banning the publications of polls and surveys one or two weeks prior to primaries and general elections would help restrain the media's eternal struggle for ratings. "It's not an exact science, but in general, the function of the media is to report, and when a TV channel or a newspaper commissions a poll, they're not reporting anymore, they're creating the news, and that is a failure of the media - where it deviates from its proper role," Ben-Eliezer said. Once the media commissioned polls and published them, it no longer reflected reality as it was but rather shaped it. "People are influenced and they can be affected by it [polls], and they may want to join what seems to be the stronger [political] group. I don't say they do it intentionally, I believe that this is a result of the fight for ratings," Ben-Eliezer said.