Israeli Censor Wielding Great Power

Israeli police collect rocket fragments in front of a damaged house in the northern Israeli city of Haifa after it was hit by a rocket fired from Lebanon Wednesday July 19, 2006. At least eight rockets fired from Lebanon fell in Haifa Wednesday, hitting one building, the army and medics said. No injuries were immediately reported, the medics said. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder) (David Guttenfelder - AP)

Or so goes the logic of censorship.

But in an era when mobile phones have cameras and the terrorists' weapons include laptops and video crews, even the chief censor acknowledges that a complete blockade of news is in many cases not possible.

"Not in 2006," she says.

Restrictions on the media are not unique to Israel. The United States military makes journalists embedded with troops in Iraq sign a document agreeing not to report specifics of troop movements and attacks in real time, for reasons similar to Israel's.

Critics say the censorship system is worse than ineffective _ it's undemocratic, often counterproductive and a violation of freedom of speech.

"People are entitled to get as much information as they can about what's happening in a conflict," says Rohan Jahasekera, associate editor of the London-based magazine, the Index of Censorship.

Israel's censorship rules are not unusual, he adds, but "it's unusual in that they're enforced."

Jahasekera also disputed arguments that reporting missile landings helped Hezbollah, since the rockets the Islamic militants use are "spectacularly inaccurate."

Bob Steele, Nelson Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute, a media studies organization, says editors should bear the responsibility for decisions to publish or not.

"These are decisions that the news organizations and journalists should make with the input of government and military officials," he said. "They should not be decisions that are made by default."

"We should always push back on censorship," Steele adds, even if it's a losing fight.