The TV deal bringing Israel’s media closer to Netanyahu
Sale of stake in news channel critical of Israeli premier is latest move to prompt questions about media independence ahead of elections
Evening news broadcasts on Channel 13 stand out in Israel’s boisterous media market for one reason: their open, deeply reported and often controversial criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Home to star journalists such as Raviv Drucker — whose investigative reporting makes him a hate figure for the Israeli premier and his allies — and partially owned by UK billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik’s Access Industries, the channel has often faced fierce pushback. Employees showed up to work last November to find graffiti labelling them “traitors”.
For a small group of some 20 Israeli tech entrepreneurs, led by the billionaire Assaf Rappaport, Channel 13’s combination of growing losses and hard-hitting news shows presented an opportunity to leverage their wealth into saving what they saw as one of the final bastions of independent TV reporting.
Each promised to chip in $1mn of seed capital to buy an initial stake in the channel, an “impact investment [designed] to fortify an independent media outlet as a democratic necessity,” said a person familiar with their deliberations.
Rappaport, who once threatened to move the finances of his $32bn cyber security firm out of Israel to protest the prime minister’s overhaul of the judiciary, led the negotiations.
He had met Blavatnik multiple times — not just in New York, but in St Bart’s, a Caribbean island that has become a favoured playground for the wealthy. Rappaport’s group had appreciation for Blavatnik’s record as an owner and worked to strengthen their relationship, said a person familiar with the situation.
But such connections were not enough to seal a deal. Despite Rappaport’s renowned deal-making prowess, his group was pipped to the post this month by the French-Israeli media magnate Patrick Drahi — another billionaire who felt it worth tussling over a minority stake in a loss-making TV channel in a tiny media market.
Unlike Rappaport and his co-investors, Drahi — who has increasingly been spending time in Israel — already owns a right-wing Israeli news outlet that echoes many of Netanyahu’s positions.
With elections expected in Israel within months, the sale to Drahi — made public earlier this week — provoked an immediate backlash. Ha’aretz, the liberal newspaper of record, ran an editorial demanding the sale be blocked, calling it part of “Netanyahu’s media destruction project”.
The Movement for Quality Government, an Israeli advocacy group, wrote to the attorney-general asking for the sale to be investigated, citing “concerns over improper political involvement and conflicts of interest”. The deal, it warned, “may be driven by political motives rather than public interest”.
Blavatnik’s Access Industries denied any political motivations for rejecting the tech entrepreneurs’ offer.
“Patrick Drahi’s proposal was selected because it represented the better deal for Channel 13,” it said, adding that Drahi’s offer injected immediate funds into the channel. “Of the two proposals, it was the higher confirmed sum, and ultimately the stronger, faster option prevailed.”
Having underwritten hundreds of millions of dollars of the channel’s losses over the past decade, the third-richest Briton simply took the best offer, the people familiar with the transaction said.
But in Israel any media transaction attracts immediate and vocal scrutiny, particularly as Netanyahu’s critics track efforts to curb independent coverage.
The administration has recently sought to shutter the state-funded Army Radio, and vowed to cut funding for the state broadcaster Kann, while advocating for a boycott of Ha’aretz, which is staunchly critical of the premier.
For Israel’s embattled news outlets — especially those critical of the country’s longest-serving prime minister — these moves are part of a decade-long Trumpian assault on the leftwing media and its once vociferous journalistic corps.
Attempts to tame the media have already yielded some success. A little-watched state-owned government heritage channel was transformed into the upstart Channel 14, a pro-Netanyahu mouthpiece.
And the 2007 arrival of the free Israel Hayom newspaper undercut the advertising and subscription market of more critical daily rivals. Launched by Netanyahu’s ally, the late US casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, Israel Hayom now dominates the print market.
But the campaign has also landed the prime minister in legal peril. In two of the three corruption cases that Netanyahu is currently battling in court, prosecutors allege he attempted to trade regulatory favours for favourable coverage in a major newspaper and a popular online news outlet.
Netanyahu denies the charges, but his lawyers have argued that it is normal for a premier to seek to shape favourable coverage, even on a near-daily basis.
Drahi’s purchase of a 14.99 per cent stake in Channel 13 further deepens his foray into Israeli media. He created the lossmaking i24 news outlet, which has shrunk from English, Arabic and French channels to a single Hebrew broadcast, and owns a cable TV and internet business called Hot.
Drahi has spent almost $500mn propping up i24, said a person familiar with its finances. The outlet, widely seen as supportive of Netanyahu’s right-wing agenda, “was a grand, crazy, philanthropic project”, the person said, to present an Israeli point of view in the Middle East.
Haim Har-Zahav, the head of the journalists’ union in Israel, reckons his motivation is Zionism. “It makes him feel as if he’s contributing to the country,” he said, arguing that Drahi believes “that if he helps Netanyahu, he helps Israel”.
“But if he wants to help Netanyahu, Netanyahu wants the media to go right-wing — then buying Channel 13 makes sense,” said Har-Zahav, who works for Channel 13’s news operation.
Drahi declined to comment on his personal purchase of the stake, which comes at a time when his heavily indebted telecom empire has faced severe strain.
Current Israeli regulations prevent him from owing more than 14.99 per cent of Channel 13 because of his ownership of Hot, but Netanyahu’s government already has a bill in the Knesset seeking to change that rule. There may be too little time before elections for it to pass, however.
The government is also considering further changes, including setting up a separate broadcast regulator more closely controlled by the government and letting the government take over the crucial task of measuring television audiences — a metric that determines advertising rates and hence directly affects TV channels’ revenues.
Spokespeople for Israel’s communication minister, Shlomo Karhi, and the regulator overseeing television and radio did not return requests for comment.
If Karhi succeeds in changing the regulations through measures described by Reporters Without Borders as “the nail in the coffin of Israeli broadcast independence”, the French-Israeli billionaire is widely expected to increase his stake in Channel 13, even as he battles creditors in Europe and explores asset sales.
A person familiar with the transaction said Drahi’s interest in Channel 13 was “purely commercial”, but turning the channel around could require a significantly higher investment than the $40mn he has agreed to pay for a minority stake.
The tech entrepreneurs led by Rappaport had pledged to invest as much as $120mn over the next three years while taking a 74 per cent stake in the business, said a person familiar with their offer.
Rappaport was the public face of the high-tech industry’s opposition to Netanyahu’s plans proposed in 2023 to weaken the judiciary. That opposition was shared by swaths of the public: protests against it convulsed Israel until they were interrupted by the war in Gaza.
The goal of the consortium was to stop “standing on the sidelines” of tectonic shifts in Israel’s political landscape, which have been accelerated by the Gaza war, said the person familiar with the offer.
The tech entrepreneurs — who collectively had money to spend after lucrative exits and IPOs of their companies — considered that their offer represented “immunity from conflicts of interest”, given none had stakes in any other regulated industries, said people familiar with their approach to Blavatnik.
Rappaport himself is set to make billions selling his cyber security firm, Wiz, to Google parent Alphabet, a transaction that will also result in a large tax windfall for the Israeli government.
But now, as crucial elections approach later this year, and Netanyahu’s corruption trial continues, Channel 13’s journalists fear lay-offs, editorial interference and a merger with i24 that could further dilute their dogged reporting.
People close to Drahi point out that a similar furore accompanied his French media purchases, of the newspapers Liberation and L’Express, where his ownership ultimately proved relatively benign, if unprofitable.
For Yaniv Goldberg, head of the Movement for Quality Government’s economic department, the plan is to challenge the deal, including potentially in the courts.
“This seems to be some kind of master plan” by Netanyahu, he said. “All the red flags are there.”