Nana 10 news reporter Omri Nahmias posted this picture to his Instagram account, of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. During a briefing for journalists ahead of the Jewish New Year, a reporter jokingly asked the minister what he thought about the current crisis the Israeli media is going through. Channel 10 – which is one of the owners of the Nana 10 website – is in danger of closing down, Ma’ariv is about to send 2,000 workers home before the Jewish holidays, and Haaretz is just barely hanging in there.
Seeing as how the atmosphere was light and everybody was joking around, Lieberman simply burst out laughing.
If you ask me, he couldn’t care less.
Avigdor Lieberman (photo: Omri Nahmias) Instagram account: omri_nahmias
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Kolumn9
Why should he care? They are first of all independent business ventures, not organs of the state, and secondly they are dominated by people that enjoy attacking him at every turn. Don’t expect him to shed any tears for the troubles over at Haaretz considering the paper’s editorial line on him is hardly flattering. I am sure he will not mourn when Haaretz gets bought out by someone that is interested in producing a newspaper whose audience includes more than those who get a thrill out of despising themselves.
Philos
K9, have you ever read Ha’aretz? Or, as I suspect, you’re only vomiting up what other people have told you about Ha’aretz?
Kolumn9
My Dear Philos, I read Haaretz on a daily basis, in both English and Hebrew (when the paywall gets in the way and not to have to wait for the translations of Sayed Kashua’s columns).
Danny
What do you expect from this Putinite thug? He was probably laughing at the reporter who was silly enough to actually ask him what he thought about the fate of open journalism in Israel. Duhhh!
ToivoS
It will be sad to see independent Israeli newspapers go under. I always found it interesting how Israel could maintain such a wonderful free press. Any newspaper needs an audience large enough to keep it alive. As an outsider, it seems that the local audience is disappearing. That is, the Israeli left is simply too tiny to support a good newspaper.
That would be sad. I discovered Haaretz after 911 as the best source of ME news after the Wa Post and NYT turned into war mongering screeds.
Bronxman
Israel placed No. 133 out of 179 countries on the latest index of press freedom released by Reporters Without Borders. Russia placed 142.
It wasn’t always like that for Israel.