Monday, April 07, 2014

Not A Silenced But A Louder Right

Amazing how everyone presumes it a prerogative to interfere in all facets of Israeli life?

Now its about who can own a newspaper.

No one got much excited about the German investor in Haaretz, although I tried.

Now it is Sheldon Adelson's purchase of Makor Rishon after his free-distributed Israel Hayom and its driving the far left wild.

First, yesterday we had a snipe by Tom Friedman and now a full blast from Shmuel Rosner in the New York Times:-




His purchase is

bad news for Israel’s public sphere.

Unproven, he claims that Adelson has a

dominance of this segment of Israel’s media market

Maybe he means this?

On every issue, at every juncture, it always seems to take the prime minister’s side.

But maybe that's like Haaretz and Yedhioth always seeming to take the opposing side to Netanyahu?

Anyway, Rosner goes off on another track:

...Mr. Adelson’s rivals have reacted foolishly to his newfound dominance; they try to legally compel him to charge a fee for Israel Hayom. Seven Knesset members signed a proposed bill in March calling for a ban on free newspapers... 

and notes that 

Mr. Bennett called Mr. Adelson’s paper “Pravda,” and he vocally supports the anti-Adelson legislation. 

But what really bothers Rosner is that Adelson

...has taken an ideological camp and turned it into a personal one...it’s no longer clear that opposition from the right will ever have a megaphone with which to argue against Mr. Netanyahu’s policies.

And despite being a non-rightwinger, he suggests that

the only way to restrain Mr. Adelson’s conquest of Israel’s right-wing media scene and ensure a healthy clash of ideas on the right is to compete with him by establishing other newspapers and finding other rich people to finance them. 

But if Adelson cannot purchase a newspaper now, why should other rich rightwingers be able to purchase, without being criticized, another newspaper in the future?

And why nothing about Eli Azour's purchase of Maariv to add to his Jerusalem Post?  Doesn't Rosner (and for sure, his left-wing friends) consider the JPost a non-left newspaper/media site?

Isn't it just great when non-rightwingers fight for the right of the right to be right?

What gives here?  After all, the left-wing press has been so much more unethical and biased.

Silencing the right?

I think it will be louder and stronger.

^

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