In its annual report released this spring, Freedom House, an American democracy advocacy organization, downgraded Israel’s freedom of the press ranking from “free” to “partly free.” To anyone following Israeli news media over the past year and a half, this was hardly surprising.
For the past 18 months, in addition to his prime ministerial duties, Netanyahu has served as Israel’s communications minister (as well as its foreign minister, economy minister and minister of regional cooperation). In this role, he and his aides have brazenly leveraged his power to seek favorable coverage from outlets that he once routinely described as “radically biased.”
Since the appointment of its new director general, the ministry has ruled on a series of decisions that have been highly advantageous to Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecommunications group. Bezeq also operates Walla News, one of the most popular news sites in the country, and a close associate of Mr. Netanyahu’s, Shaul Elovitch, owns a controlling stake.
It didn’t take long before the site’s coverage of the Netanyahu government turned decidedly positive.
Walla News isn’t alone. An atmosphere of intimidation has begun to take hold in many, if not most, of the country’s newsrooms. A source in Israel Hayom, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, told me that the prime minister “holds everyone on a leash — everyone — not just us. With the other outlets, you might not realize what their interests are but they exist all the same.”
“At some point Netanyahu realized that his battle with the media makes him very popular among his base supporters,” Ms. Dayan said. “By catering to this base, the result has been a phenomenal success for him.”
If Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts to control the news media are indeed aimed at correcting a liberal bias, his actions have proved awfully narrow. For Mr. Netanyahu, the stakes are personal. “Every time you see an appointment by Bibi of someone in the media, it’s meant either to help Sara or to help advance his own private affairs,” Mr. Segal told me, using the prime minister’s nickname.
