Editors Committee (Israel)

The Editors Committee is an informal forum comprising the editors and owners of the main Israeli media. It meets regularly with the prime minister, cabinet members and senior officials. Until the 1980s, it took a central role in the self-censorship practiced by the Israeli media. The understanding was that the information reported to the committee would not be published in the media, even once received from another source.

The British authorities enacted in 1933 the Press Ordinance, which regulated the content of the news press in British Palestine. Many of the country's Jewish newspapers, particularly the English-language Jerusalem Post and those printed in Hebrew, were founded by Zionist political parties during the pre-statehood period, and subsequently continued to be politically affiliated with such parties.

Professor Dan Caspi, who has served as chairman of the Israeli Communications Association, notes in his Mass Media and Politics (The Open University, 1997), "The majority of the newspapers in Israel's pre-state period were founded as ideological organs of political trends, and were under the ideological authority of the political parties and dependent on their financial backing. The party institutions and their leaders were involved in the selection process for the sensitive senior positions in the paper, particularly in the choice of the editor."

In the pre-state yishuv period, most Hebrew press editors felt that their primary role was educational, to help in the state-building process. Such values as freedom of the press and the idea of being a public watchdog were secondary. The editors of the Hebrew-language press founded the Reaction Committee in 1942 because, as they stated at the time, they "felt the need for guidance from the Jewish community's leadership on publication policy concerning sensitive matters, such as the expulsion of ma'apilim (illegal immigrants) and the search for weapons in Hebrew settlements".

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