Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and has the most vibrant media in the region, but this did not prevent the U.S.-based Freedom House NGO from downgrading its designation of the Israeli media from "free" to "partly free" in its 2016 Freedom of the Press report. In the report, Israel was ranked 65th worldwide in media freedom, with a score of 32 points on a 0-100 scale (with 0 being most free and 100 being least free). "Israel declined from 'free' to 'partly free' due to the growing impact of Israel Hayom, whose owner-subsidized business model endangered the stability of other media outlets," the report said. In response to the report, Likud MK Anat Berko said, "The media in Israel is completely pluralistic and democratic. There are a variety of newspapers that offer the full range of political views in the country. As a matter of fact, the media in Israel expresses the harshest criticism of the government, and it does so in a way not done in the U.S., certainly not during times of war. There is less freedom of press in the U.S. than there is in Israel." In her blog, Washington Post journalist Jennifer Rubin quoted Noah Pollak, the executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, as saying, "It is time to downgrade Freedom House from 'not stupid' to 'mostly stupid.'" Regarding criticism of the free distribution of Israel Hayom, Rubin wrote, "Maybe the invention of the free internet or the success of free Twitter and Facebook have made the United States unfree, since so many publications have gone belly up." Rubin also quoted former high-ranking U.S. State Department official Elliott Abrams as saying, "Israel Hayom was founded in 2007 to provide Israelis an alternative to the left-leaning press. It has become the widest circulation newspaper in the country, not just because it is free, but because so many Israelis want an alternative view. To say that Israel is suddenly only 'partly free' because it now has a popular center-right newspaper is malicious and ignorant." In Commentary magazine, Jonathan Tobin wrote, "Israel, which has far more active newspapers per capita than most democracies, remains a country where critics of the government and of the country, in general, have no trouble in being heard on radio and television or in finding space in general circulation publications. Indeed, it is often far more difficult to find those who back Israel's government or its current prime minister than it is to encounter his opponents in the media. In that respect, the Israeli press tilts even further to the left than that in the United States." Tobin wrote that the Israeli public has voted against the Left in the past three elections and that Israel Hayom has filled the media void for this non-leftist majority. "The Israeli Left has greeted the success of a newspaper that tilts to the Right with dismay," Tobin wrote. "But rather than merely fulminating about Israel Hayom's popularity or declaring that they will have nothing to do with it -- as Fox News' liberal detractors have done -- Israeli liberals have sought to take action to silence their rival. Like Freedom House, they seemed to think there was something unfair about a conservative paper that favored Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu getting more readers than those dominated by the Left. In the last Knesset, the left-wing parties like Labor and its allies promoted legislation that would effectively ban free circulation papers like Israel Hayom. "Had they succeeded, Freedom House and other media monitors would have had good reason to question Israeli press freedom, since the bill targeting Israel Hayom would have amounted to a legislative bill of attainder that would have silenced one of the few mainstream alternatives to left-wing political orthodoxy. But fortunately, the effort failed and, after Netanyahus third consecutive election victory and the formation of a right-wing majority government, this genuine threat to press freedom is no longer on the table." In a display of utter hypocrisy, the websites of Haaretz and TheMarker on Wednesday prominently featured articles about the Freedom House report. This marked a shift from past behavior, when both viewed Israel Hayom as an ally in the media war against Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom was printed at the Haaretz printing house. But times have changed, and Haaretz has shifted course. New times, new songs. Should the United Kingdom be downgraded to- For comparison's sake, let's examine the situation in the United Kingdom, where no one, even Freedom House, casts doubt on the freedom of press. Like in the rest of the world, the distribution of print newspapers is on a continuous decline in the U.K. For example, circulation of the Sun, the U.K.'s most popular paper, has dropped from 3 million daily copies in 2010 to 1.8 million copies today. During the same time period, the Daily Mirror has fallen from 1.2 million copies to 800,000 copies and the Daily Telegraph has dropped from 670,000 copies to 470,000 copies. The major leftist newspapers in the U.K. have also seen declines. Daily circulation of the Guardian has decreased from 300,000 copies to 165,000 copies and circulation of the Independent (the equivalent of Haaretz in Israel) plummeted from 185,000 copies to only 55,000 copies, forcing the newspaper earlier this year to cease publication of its print edition and become a digital-only operation. One of the U.K.'s oldest newspapers, the Evening Standard (which was founded in 1827), decided in 2009, after a sharp drop in circulation, to become a free newspaper. Its decline in circulation was reversed and its daily circulation number has risen from 700,000 copies to 900,000 copies. The Evening Standard and the free Metro newspaper (1.3 million daily copies) are among the top five highest circulation newspapers in the U.K. today. In other words, according to the criteria Freedom House used to downgrade the Israeli media -- the existence of a mass distribution free newspaper -- the British media should also be downgraded to "partly free." Absurd, no-
Free internet, free television channels, free Facebook, free Twitter and also free newspapers. This has been the trend around the world for the past decade. Traditional media outlets must adapt -- or they are the problem.
