Head to Head / Journalist Gal Gabai, why does the press keep talking about Dan Margalit's salary?

Yedioth Ahronoth published an extensive article on Margalit's salary, which the paper says comes to NIS 70,000 a month. Margalit responded in a column the next day in the newspaper Israel Hayom, which also employs him, saying that his salary amounts to only half that sum and accusing Yedioth of attempting to malign him personally. On Monday, senior Yedioth correspondent Nahum Barnea wrote a column about Margalit and his salary, and called for educational TV to be shut down. Ben Kaspit, who is the political commentator for Maariv and a host on the network, defended it in Maariv the next day. Journalists have never expressed so much concern in a single week about the salary of one of their own.

	Gal Gabai.
	Photo by: Lea Golda Holterman

Journalist Gal Gabai hosts two programs on educational TV: "Osim Seder" (with Kaspit ) and the documentary series "Vacuum," both of which look at social and cultural issues in Israel.

What is the source of all these articles about Dan Margalit's salary?

God only knows. It's very strange, since everyone in the business knows the value of an icon, and Dan Margalit is without a doubt the educational channel's icon. He's been on "Erev Hadash" from the start. Just as Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv guard their icons, every organization that wants to maintain its existence must defend its symbols. The communications business is also a matter of habits, seniority and symbolic capital that is acquired over a long period of time. Just as Yedioth guards its icon, Nahum Barnea, public television guards its own: Dan Margalit.

But this is public money.

I made "Vacuum," a documentary series, and I'd like to see a commercial station willing to take up that challenge. I want to see a journalist willing to take the salary I get for my work. Public funds are not being thrown away, or wasted on inept management. These are professionals who make the choice to give their experience to a public channel and are aware of its importance.

So what's the root of all these articles?

Media platforms are changing all the time, such that the profession of journalism stretches itself in directions that endanger its very nature. It twists and turns when market forces, modern management principles and the free market operate. But just because the platforms change doesn't mean that the definition of professionalism has changed. Someone has to guard the limits of this profession. People say that the profession has to adjust itself to the rules of commerce. Market forces act on us journalists to the point of self-censorship, because we have to be relevant to our time and place and understand the interests that surround us. Just because the platforms change doesn't mean that the profession must change. If there is a 'God's little acre' in journalism, if there is a place where professional boundaries still exist, it is public television; and here I can say with certainty that content is king.

This isn't the first time that people have called for public broadcasting to be shut down, and it isn't the first time that people have criticized salaries for veteran journalists who work for educational TV. What makes this any different?

It is not surprising that the ones calling for the closing of educational TV are media outlets. There is competition for scarce resources. Public TV also has its foot in the door at Channel 2, every day, and from its point of view, the war is justified. But if journalism is a matter of public interest and if it goes hand in hand with democracy, the interest is that public television survives.

But there already is public broadcasting; it's is called the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Why throw money at two stations?

The commercial channels are also based on public resources. People talk about public money being wasted, but at the commercial stations private investors rake in money and have enormous influence because of the franchise they received from the public. If we want to talk about the so-called waste of money on salaries, let's compare the salaries of senior journalists, the talents, at the commercial channels to those of the senior journalists employed by the public channels.

Why do you think this has come up now?

Israel is small and has many channels. The competition is becoming fierce and people are fighting over every piece of the toilet paper. This war has invaded the honesty of the profession, which isn't supposed to be important only to me and my bosses, but to every citizen. If journalism is unethical, ours will not be a democratic society. An all-out war is taking place now over squares on the board, without anyone noticing that the profession is dying. It is changing, changing its nature. Every thinking person must ask why this niche channel has become the focus of struggle for powerful people and organizations. It's just a niche channel, right? Aside from that, there are so many distortions and so much waste in the national budget; where is the battle over that? I don't agree that educational television is a waste.

Still, the public votes with the remote control. Educational TV's rating is the lowest of all; the educational channel is an undiscovered continent for most viewers.

Consideration of ratings is for the most part an excuse to maintain a particular monolithic debate. In fact, two "Vacuum" episodes that were broadcast on Memorial Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day received excellent ratings, 8 and 9 percent in the afternoon. The educational channel has its audience and its value. It preserves a language that is becoming extinct, a world that is disappearing, and a way of thinking that is fading away.

How many of the most important icons in the literary world, for example, are best-selling writers? Is this the only measure of importance? The only compass? It is not a compass but a weather vane, and journalism is a very particular profession. Just as medicine preserves its values and doctors take an oath, the same is true of journalists. A journalist who only asks how much has been sold needs to take a closer look at himself.