Posted on 11/29/2010 7:03:43 PM PST by ChicagoHebrew
Israel - Las Vegas gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson is a significant figure in Republican politics — the 13th richest man in America and one of the GOP’s biggest donors. But he’s an even bigger player in Israel, where he’s a key backer of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet Adelson’s sharpest transformation of the political landscape may be through his ownership of Israel Hayom (“Israel Today”), a three-year-old free daily newspaper that quietly became the most widely distributed daily in the country this summer. It stirs passions strong enough that legislators have sought to hobble it with laws banning foreign ownership and selling below cost. Adelson’s paper is an assault on the media status quo in the model of Fox News in a country where newspapers still litigate the political conversation. The echoes aren’t subtle: One of the five principles printed on the tabloid’s dense second page translates as “fair and balanced.” Advertisement:
And like Fox, the paper has positioned itself against a mainstream media its editors cast as elitist and out of touch. Another of the five principles is “to remember that we are Israelis.” The paper’s foreign editor, Boaz Bismuth, a former Israeli ambassador to Mauritania and longtime Paris correspondent for Yediot Aharonot — the new paper’s main target and rival — embraces the comparison. “Fox is proud to be American, but what is nice about America is that ABC and CBS and NBC are no less proud to be American,” he said in an interview at the paper’s quiet, humming Tel Aviv newsroom, leaving unstated the suggestion that Israel Hayom’s rivals are not so proud. “It doesn’t mean that if sometimes Israel is right that I work for the government,” said Bismuth, who offered an example of the new paper’s posture: “If there are rumors about the bad conduct of a soldier, it won’t immediately be our main headline.” Israel Hayom takes as its premise that out-of-touch mainstream media are the country’s real power. “They try to portray my newspaper as the real ruler of Israel, not Netanyahu,” said Nahum Barnea, the top columnist at Yediot Aharonot, labeling the charge “ridiculous.” The media tracking firm TGI reported this summer that Israel Hayom has risen to a rough tie with Yediot, with each reaching about a third of the reading public. The paper’s rise has occasioned a serious newspaper war, with Yediot — which is not free — stepping up its efforts to distribute free copies to train riders and other readers. And while its rivals grit their teeth, the paper has been welcomed by Netanyahu’s circle. “It’s made a big difference in the country,” said Netanyahu’s closest adviser, Ron Dermer. Dermer said it remains a missed opportunity that none of the country’s television stations have followed the same “Fox model” of “chang[ing] the editorial line.” Indeed, Israel Hayom differs from its rivals not in that it never breaks with Netanyahu — a top columnist was sharply critical, for instance, of his efforts to bring deputies from a centrist party into his coalition — but in that it lacks their fundamentally confrontational stance toward the prime minister, a constant target of criticism from the three main Hebrew-language dailies. Adelson declined through a spokesman to respond to written questions from POLITICO, but — echoing American conservatives’ critique of U.S. mainstream media — he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview last year that Yediot Ahronot’s publisher is “the most powerful man in the state of Israel” and is “always thumping on Bibi [b]ecause he can’t control Bibi.” Hayom’s rivals argue that it’s a political venture, not a business one. It’s been nicknamed “Bibiton,” a pun on Netanyahu’s nickname and the Hebrew word for newspaper, “iton.” Certainly, Israel Hayom behaves nothing like the slim, skeleton-staffed free dailies, such as the Metro chain, that have sprung up around the world in recent years. POLITICO visited the newsroom on a Thursday, the last day of the Israeli week, as editors discussed the weekend edition — not something your average consumer paper bothers producing. Israel Hayom also delivers, for free and at great expense, even, Barnea marveled, to his son, an impecunious college student. “It’s the future of newspapers as nonprofits,” quipped Aluf Benn, a columnist for the left-leaning broadsheet Haaretz on whose presses, incidentally, Israel Hayom is printed. Critics see the paper as a naked bid to bolster Netanyahu or to create an implicit threat on Netanyahu’s right flank and speculate frequently on whether, if Netanyahu signs a peace deal with Palestinian leaders, the paper will pivot to attacking him from the right. Israel Hayom’s executives, most of them veterans of the other papers, vigorously deny that their politics is anything but good business. They declined to detail the paper’s financials, but one senior editor said the paper is nearly breaking even, and it is certainly bursting with advertising, a sign of financial health. “Everybody thinks I started the newspaper Israel Hayom purely to benefit Bibi. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Adelson said in the JTA interview. “I started the newspaper to give Israel, Israelis, a fair and balanced view.”
My eyes! My eyes! Paragraphs, anyone?
Israel - Las Vegas gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson is a significant figure in Republican politics — the 13th richest man in America and one of the GOP’s biggest donors. But he’s an even bigger player in Israel, where he’s a key backer of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yet Adelson’s sharpest transformation of the political landscape may be through his ownership of Israel Hayom (“Israel Today”), a three-year-old free daily newspaper that quietly became the most widely distributed daily in the country this summer. It stirs passions strong enough that legislators have sought to hobble it with laws banning foreign ownership and selling below cost.
Adelson’s paper is an assault on the media status quo in the model of Fox News in a country where newspapers still litigate the political conversation. The echoes aren’t subtle: One of the five principles printed on the tabloid’s dense second page translates as “fair and balanced.”
Advertisement:And like Fox, the paper has positioned itself against a mainstream media its editors cast as elitist and out of touch. Another of the five principles is “to remember that we are Israelis.”
The paper’s foreign editor, Boaz Bismuth, a former Israeli ambassador to Mauritania and longtime Paris correspondent for Yediot Aharonot — the new paper’s main target and rival — embraces the comparison.
“Fox is proud to be American, but what is nice about America is that ABC and CBS and NBC are no less proud to be American,” he said in an interview at the paper’s quiet, humming Tel Aviv newsroom, leaving unstated the suggestion that Israel Hayom’s rivals are not so proud.
“It doesn’t mean that if sometimes Israel is right that I work for the government,” said Bismuth, who offered an example of the new paper’s posture: “If there are rumors about the bad conduct of a soldier, it won’t immediately be our main headline.”
Israel Hayom takes as its premise that out-of-touch mainstream media are the country’s real power.
“They try to portray my newspaper as the real ruler of Israel, not Netanyahu,” said Nahum Barnea, the top columnist at Yediot Aharonot, labeling the charge “ridiculous.”
The media tracking firm TGI reported this summer that Israel Hayom has risen to a rough tie with Yediot, with each reaching about a third of the reading public. The paper’s rise has occasioned a serious newspaper war, with Yediot — which is not free — stepping up its efforts to distribute free copies to train riders and other readers.
And while its rivals grit their teeth, the paper has been welcomed by Netanyahu’s circle.
“It’s made a big difference in the country,” said Netanyahu’s closest adviser, Ron Dermer.
Dermer said it remains a missed opportunity that none of the country’s television stations have followed the same “Fox model” of “chang[ing] the editorial line.”
Indeed, Israel Hayom differs from its rivals not in that it never breaks with Netanyahu — a top columnist was sharply critical, for instance, of his efforts to bring deputies from a centrist party into his coalition — but in that it lacks their fundamentally confrontational stance toward the prime minister, a constant target of criticism from the three main Hebrew-language dailies. Adelson declined through a spokesman to respond to written questions from POLITICO, but — echoing American conservatives’ critique of U.S. mainstream media — he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview last year that Yediot Ahronot’s publisher is “the most powerful man in the state of Israel” and is “always thumping on Bibi [b]ecause he can’t control Bibi.”
Hayom’s rivals argue that it’s a political venture, not a business one. It’s been nicknamed “Bibiton,” a pun on Netanyahu’s nickname and the Hebrew word for newspaper, “iton.” Certainly, Israel Hayom behaves nothing like the slim, skeleton-staffed free dailies, such as the Metro chain, that have sprung up around the world in recent years. POLITICO visited the newsroom on a Thursday, the last day of the Israeli week, as editors discussed the weekend edition — not something your average consumer paper bothers producing. Israel Hayom also delivers, for free and at great expense, even, Barnea marveled, to his son, an impecunious college student.
“It’s the future of newspapers as nonprofits,” quipped Aluf Benn, a columnist for the left-leaning broadsheet Haaretz on whose presses, incidentally, Israel Hayom is printed.
Critics see the paper as a naked bid to bolster Netanyahu or to create an implicit threat on Netanyahu’s right flank and speculate frequently on whether, if Netanyahu signs a peace deal with Palestinian leaders, the paper will pivot to attacking him from the right.
Israel Hayom’s executives, most of them veterans of the other papers, vigorously deny that their politics is anything but good business. They declined to detail the paper’s financials, but one senior editor said the paper is nearly breaking even, and it is certainly bursting with advertising, a sign of financial health.
“Everybody thinks I started the newspaper Israel Hayom purely to benefit Bibi. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Adelson said in the JTA interview. “I started the newspaper to give Israel, Israelis, a fair and balanced view.”
“I started the newspaper to give Israel, Israelis, a fair and balanced view.”
Maybe the Jews in America will read Israel Today and get their heads out of Democrat’s rear-ends and realize most dems are anti-Semites!
Sheldon Adelson is a significant figure in Republican politics -- the 13th richest man in America and one of the GOP's biggest donors. But he's an even bigger player in Israel, where he's a key backer of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet Adelson's sharpest transformation of the political landscape may be through his ownership of Israel Hayom ("Israel Today"), a three-year-old free daily newspaper that quietly became the most widely distributed daily in the country this summer.
Of the three Hebrew dailies, Haaretz is far Leftist, Yediot Acharonot is leftist and Maariv can be described as slightly center right. The TV networks are leftist.
Hayom is the first conservative paper in Hebrew to acquire a wide readership. I left the Jerusalem Post out of the discussion because relatively few Israelis read it. The country has come a long way from the day of Labor socialism to the point where Labor is a dying party and Meretz is almost extinct.
Much more needs to be done before the Israeli mass media is truly “fair and balanced.”
Great stuff!
Wherever socialism has been tried, it has failed miserably.
Wherever conservatism has been tried, it has been a success.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Well then he's ok in my book.
Hayom’s rivals argue that it’s a political venture, not a business one.Fine, suppose that to be true. What then remains to be proven is that newspapers which are business ventures are inherently objective, or inherently reflect the public interest. If a newspaper is a business venture, it inherently is tempted to place the bottom line above the public good. Yielding to that temptation makes it a better business - and a worse projector of the public interest.
Any newspaper which takes its own objectivity for granted is not objective about itself.The only logical approach to that conundrum is "caveat lector" - let the reader beware. Any other approach requires trust in an arbiter who may himself be - actually, must be - unable to be objecive. The problem is then transferred to trying to watch the arbiter - which is harder than vetting the things which the arbiter censors because you cannot see what is censored.Why the Associated Press is Pernicious to the Public Interest
The Market for Conservative-Based News
Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate
I wish Adelson would buy some U.S. Papers too.
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