Source: +972 Mag, April 29, 2016
Freedom House has downgraded its ranking of Israel’s media from ‘free’ to ‘partly free,’ citing closer ties to the government and a spike in paid media content. But it has one flagrant omission: Israel’s poor treatment of Palestinian journalists.
Freedom House, the U.S.-based watchdog NGO that reports on the state of civil liberties around the world, has downgraded its ranking of Israel’s media from “free” to “partly free” in its 2016 Freedom of the Press Report. The authors of the report cite the influence of the free daily newspaper Israel Hayom, which is owned and subsidized at a huge loss by American casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who is an unabashed patron of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel Hayom pursues an editorial agenda that is overtly partisan toward Netanyahu, which is why it is often referred to as the “Bibiton,” a portmanteau of the Hebrew word for “newspaper” and the Israeli leader’s nickname, Bibi. The report also cites the “unchecked expansion” of paid media content, which is not always clearly identified. It notes that this paid content is sometimes funded by the government.
This is not the first time Israel’s ranking has been downgraded. In its 2013 report Freedom House based a downgrade on several factors, most prominently on the indictment of Uri Blau, an investigative reporter for Haaretz, for possession of state secrets in the IDF whistleblower Anat Kamm case. Nor is this the first time Freedom House has noted the influence of Israel Hayom on Israel’s press freedom: The free daily was cited in the 2013 report as well, for having “threatened the sustainability of other papers and contributed to the collapse and buyout of the daily Maariv.”
The free/partly free ranking is a matter of just a few points in their methodology, pointed out Freedom House’s Sarah Repucci, who heads up the publication of the annual Freedom of the Press Report. She added, “We use detailed methodology. Israel shifted only two points this year.”
There was some outrage in right-wing circles over the downgrade, with Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin quoting a couple of DC-based neo-cons to support her claim that the report was an example of anti-Israel bias.
Read more: http://972mag.com/partly-free-the-real-state-of-israeli-press-freedom-is-much-worse/118928/
The ranking went down 2 points, which put Israel in a different bracket. Not a big deal, actually...
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