The defendant admitted that he was in an agitated state of mind during the monologue, a subject that he neglected to mention to his viewers. The defendant declared to me that he did not retract what he said (p. 78, lines 11-32).
The ceiling for compensation without proof of damage according to the law is ILS 50,000 and currently exceeds ILS 80,000. In view of the seriousness of the incident, taking into account that defamatory remarks were made on a well-known television channel, I have come to the conclusion that the proper compensation in this case is ILS 75,000.
Defendant 2's Liability
Section 11(a) of the law, entitled "Liability for Publication in the Media", states: "If defamation is published in the media, criminal and civil liability will be held due to the defamation, the person who brought the defamation to the media and thereby caused its publication, the editor of the media and the person who actually decided on the publication, and the person responsible for the media will also bear civil liability."
Defendant 2 claimed that it has the defense by virtue of section 15(12), which applies to the publication of "a radio or television broadcast that was not recorded in advance, and the defendant or defendant is the person responsible under section 11 and he did not know and could not have known about the intention to publish defamation". This defense is given subject to the existence of good faith, as it is part of the good faith defenses in section 15 of the Law.
In the Alon Hamdani ruling, the District Court clarified that this provision grants immunity to media outlets, when the publication of defamation is done live, by a third party, who is not one of the presenters on its behalf, and when he did not know or should not have known about the intention to publish the defamation. In the matter brought before it, the court held: "In our case, the publication of the alleged defamation was not made by a third party, but by the presenters of the program during the live broadcast. Hence, this claim must be rejected." (Paragraph 91) (Appeal against the judgment rejected by the Supreme Court Other Municipality Applications 3858-20 Barak Haim Cohen v. Alon Hamdani (June 15,2022)).