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With the successful development of The Media Charter, the first code of ethics for the Arabic media, Arab journalists in Israel now have, for the first time since 1948, their own ethical code to govern their working practices.
This development is a crucial step towards the establishment and instilling of journalistic values and standards. This vast and impressive achievement in the Arabic media landscape became a possibility due to the intellectual exertion and deep commitment of a committee of ten Arab editors and senior journalists that worked extensively over the length of a year.
In contrast to their colleagues in the Arab world, since 1948, Arab journalists in Israel have lacked professional and ethical regulatory bodies as a reference for their own work. The need for such a reference point was intensified by the fact that they lived in almost total disconnection to their common cultural surrounding – the Arab world. Here are one million Arab Palestinians living with hardly any cultural contact with 100 million Arabs residing on their borders, almost no exchange of books and literature, no interaction between university students, practically no possibility in participating in shared cultural events, very little exchange of newspapers or media, little cooperation in the artistic sphere - a total barrier to normal human cultural development.
When talking about the Arab media in Israel today, it can be described more as a commercial commodity than as a political and cultural empowerment tool. The total separation from the rich culture of the Arab world from one side, and the non-existence of fair professional relations with the Israeli media from the other side, has had far reaching consequences.
The starting point for building a code of ethics for self-regulation for journalists was one in which there was a total absence of awareness of ethical regulations in the work of Arab journalists. Nevertheless, Arab journalists took responsibility for the development of such a code, thus creating a reference point which would influence and give direction to journalists in their daily work as well as to the society and the way they consume media. This important change in the relation between media and media consumers is a crucial one as Arab civil society will now have the tools to address the media and hold it accountable. Such development will make local Arabic media more credible and professional.
The most important impact of The Media Charter is perhaps its ability to encourage ‘media criticism’, that is it creates the possibility for people to criticize the media and to coerce it to abide to commonly-agreed upon ethical and professional standards of journalism.
After the Steering Committee of the code agreed on the final version of the code on July 2 2007, it was presented to the members of the Forum of Journalists, who formally endorsed the code with several reservations which were presented to the Steering Committee. On 22 August 2007 the final version of the code of ethics was released to the public. As of date, 100 journalists have signed The Media Charter.
The Media Charter is being used as a basis for the monitoring of the Arabic media. The code’s principles are drawn upon in the writing up of every report produced in the qualitative and quantitative monitoring projects, and specifically in the Fortnight Qualitative Monitoring of the Arabic Media (see below), the code forms the very basis against which the Arabic media is analysed.
Click on the following links to download The Media Charter in Arabic and English. | 
