Mei Finegold. Photo : Lior Nordman

Israel – Mei Finegold was announced last week as the representative for Israel at Eurovision 2014. However in an article by the on-line website Mako, it alleged that the Legal Department of IBA (Israeli National Broadcaster) are investigating irregularities in the broadcasters own Eurovision Selection guidelines that could possibly see a revision of the decision to send Finegold to Eurovision.

Mako suggest that there are potentially several legal breaches in conduct by the Internal Eurovision Selection Committee in IBA

You can read the full article HERE

Points Under Review

• No specification of the number of jury members on the Selection Committee
• Criteria of the Jury Panel not meeting the IBA standards as specified
• Undocumented details of the internal discussions on a potential artist and unclear voting transparency ie who was permitted to vote etc
• 16 acts were submitted to the panel for consideration though jury members could only provide votes of 8/10/12. This not ranking all singers by all jury members and thus potentially resulting in not the overall desired singer
• No voting criteria was provided to the Jury members and also no disclosure that a Jury member could submit themselves for consideration
• Why did IBA not make an open call for artists for consideration?
• The selection process not being made public for review
• No disclosure of the 16 acts that were up for consideration by IBA
• The Deputy Head of Delegation made the final decision as to what video material was provided to the jury panel upon which they made their decision. Why was this duty not carried out by the Head of Delegation or ask the artist to send in a video themselves that best portrayed their talent.

It is not specified if the results of this internal investigation will be made to the public. In the meantime IBA have made a call for submission for a potential Eurovision entry for Israel. Will it be for Finegold or potentially another of the 16 shortlisted artists.

Author/Website co-founder and Editor in Chief Garrett Mulhall

Source : Mako and Eurovoix