Public broadcasting

If a show about famous singers riding around in their cars singing to their own hits on the radio is “one of its most exciting original programs” that the new Kan (“Here”) broadcasting corporation has to offer (“Finally, live and on air,” May 16), I’d rather be

sham (there), or anywhere else, for that matter.

After all these months, that’s the best they could come up with? LAURIE FLANZBAUM OVADIA Hadera

In your May 15 editorial “A new and free IBC,” you make a connection between public broadcasting and freedom of the press.

Having grown up in the United States, I remember many radio stations and television stations, many with talk and call-in shows. I remember the one public broadcasting channel – and it was pretty boring.

I do not think anything was wrong with American democracy. We were taught that by hearing different viewpoints we would be able to develop our own opinions. That is the core of democracy.

Unfortunately, the public broadcasting in Israel became very one-sided, and there was very little room for varied opinions. If someone would study the various programs on Reshet Bet under the Israel Broadcasting Authority, they would see that many of them had a clear leftwing agenda.

Two really blatant examples were the legal program and the morning program. Until the Arutz Sheva station opened, anyone with right-wing views felt isolated in his opinions. Then the so-called “keepers of democracy” quickly acted to disband the station.

You write that the 2016 Media Intelligence Service study report found that “where there is more public broadcasting on television, right-wing extremism tends to be less popular .... ” Are you saying that the media’s job is to educate the public and tell us what to think and feel? I, for one, do not need the media to brainwash me.

Yisrael Medad and Eli Pollack do a much better job than I in their Media Comment columns. I would just like to hope that with the opening of the new channels, some new blood will join the ranks, and perhaps with that a more varied display of opinions. NANCY CHERNOFSKY Jerusalem

What a pleasure it was in the few days after the IBA ceased its broadcasts and before its successor, the IBC, started its own. I could listen to beautiful music on Reshet Bet, and not the usual programming that had politicians bad-mouthing each other left and right every two minutes.

Too bad the IBC couldn’t postpone going live... like, forever? LARRY BIGIO Zichron Ya’acov