Media Call For Transparency After Reporters Barred From Holy Of Holies

A team of reporters and cameramen applied for access to film the rites that are performed once a year in the Holy of Holies, and were turned down.

Jerusalem, July 18 – Journalist groups denounced the administration of the Holy Temple today for impinging on freedom of the press after the administration refused an application to allow reporters to accompany the High Priest into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement.

Luke Baker, head of the Foreign Press Association in the Holy Land and a journalist for Reuters, called for greater transparency in the conduct of the Temple service, saying it was an improper restriction on the media to prohibit reporters from entering. He spoke at a gathering of journalists in Jerusalem to discuss the challenges and issues facing them in the context of reportage on developments in the country and region.

“This organization has lodged a formal protest with the authorities over the banishment of journalists from certain parts of the Temple complex,” he announced. “At a time when transparency is recognized as a pillar of good governance and procedure, we cannot fathom the thinking of the Temple administration in restricting access to the Holy of Holies only to one person when he enters several times on Yom Kippur.”

Baker related that a team of reporters and cameramen applied for access to film the rites that are performed once a year in the Holy of Holies, and were turned down. “The people have the right to know what’s going on in there,” he argued. “If there’s a ritual happening that’s supposedly on behalf of the people, then what business do they have hiding it from the people? I’m not implying anything untoward is happening behind closed doors – it’s the principle of the thing.”

Members of the association similarly criticized the Temple administration for hiding their need for secrecy behind other values. “We were told it would be a violation of the privacy and intimacy of the encounter,” recalled Voy Yeur, a Belgian cameraman who works with the BBC and CNN. “To me that’s always a sign somebody’s trying to hide something. I mean, there’s no shortage of people who will allow cameras into their bedrooms to film absolutely everything, so it must be that the people who don’t let the press in have something they’re trying to conceal. It’s just not normal, you know? The people have the right to know everything about everybody.”

“I wonder if we send a drone…that was off the record,” insisted Yeur. “You can’t print that. It would be a violation of privacy, or of confidence.”