This statement by one of the senior judges in the Israeli court system reflects the increasing frustration felt by judges about current media policy that requires prior approval of the Chief Justice or the intervention of the spokesperson of the Judicial Authority for virtually all communication between judges and journalists. Despite changes in the organizational structure of the information services of the courts, and increasing concern for the image of the courts in the media and its potential effect on public trust in the courts, the basic policy of judicial distance from the media and the ethos of “letting the decisions speak for themselves” still dominate within the Israeli legal establishment (Peleg and Bogoch 2014).

This chapter will describe the current status of judicial-media relations in Israel, including the changes that have occurred over time, as well as the unintended consequences of the court's media policy. It is based on both publicly available material from the Judicial Authority's Information Services, as well as information conveyed to us by the spokesperson, press statements by judges and reporters, recent research on the media coverage of the court, and interviews conducted with 40 presently serving and retired judges and justices and 30 journalists. First, we will describe the Israeli judicial system and the research on the media coverage of the courts in this country. Next, we will present the structure and organization of the Judicial Authority Information Services, and the changes that have occurred over time in the court-media relationship, including the reaction of the Judicial Authority to technological changes. Finally we will discuss the unintended consequences of the court's media policy, and the dilemmas that these have triggered among both journalists and judges.