Why are so few Arabs interviewed on Israeli TV?
Published ratings tracking the number of Israeli Arab interviewees on Israeli TV has got the media's attention.
They routinely don't show up. They live far away and have a hard time getting to the studio. They don’t answer the phone. They refuse to speak Hebrew. They are reluctant to appear in the Jewish media. They also bring down ratings. These are the main excuses one would likely hear from Jewish television journalists as to why there are hardly any Arabs interviewed in the mainstream Hebrew media, although Arabs make up about 20% of Israel's total population.
Actually, it would be easy for an audience to conclude on its own that there is a noticeable absence of Arabs on Israeli television. The Index of Arab Representation in the Media, published by Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality, would confirm this impression.
“We conducted a preliminary investigation in January-February and discovered that Arab representation hasn’t changed for years,” said Edan Ring, who coordinates the representation index. “The figures that we found are similar to the results of studies conducted by the Second Channel for Television and Radio.”
The studies to which Ring referred found that in 2003, only 3% of the people presented on Hebrew-language broadcasts were Arab citizens, and that number dropped in 2005 and in 2011.
