The Jerusalem Post: Transformation or Disintegration?
BUSHINSKY, JAY
THE JERUSALEM POST Transformation OR DISINTEGRATION JAY BUSHINSKY The recent transformation—or is it disintegration?—of Israel's only English-language daily newspaper, TheJerusalem Post, is a...
...According to a report in The New York Times, he has assured Israeli government officials that the paper's editorial line will change...
...The "straw that broke the camel's back," to use Frenkel's phrase, was Levy's application in writing to the prestigious Editors' Committee, a body of Frenkel's counterparts in the Hebrew press, in which Levy stated that he, Levy, intended "to become very involved in the work of the editorial department, with all that this implies...
...He had gotten to know Radler quite well when Levy served as a shaliach (representative) in Vancouver, Canada for the Jewish National Fund...
...Shamir accused the Post of harming Israel's international image and of "slandering the country," presumably because of its reporting of the intifada and its editorial positions regarding the West Bank and Gaza...
...Here Levy approved Rath's and Frenkel's decision...
...Hollinger's offer for The Jerusalem Post was an astonishing $20.6 million...
...The newspaper's founder, Gershon Agronsky, purchased and incorporated into his newspaper the Palestine Bulletin, a daily that had been published since 1925...
...It has not been enraptured in its reporting of events by the prime minister's reading of Israel's international position, just as it has not cloaked the diversity of opinion in Israel itself...
...Another issue in Israel involves foreign continued on page 54 The Jerusalem Post continued from page 25 ownership of its mass media...
...According to Frenkel, as soon as Levy took over he was "subject to appeals from the newspaper detractors, especially from the political right...
...It is clear that this is not simply a management squabble over administrative procedures...
...he was due to turn 65 the following January...
...After the war, the Post was regarded as a means of influencing opinion in London, and was frequently at odds with the Mandate government, especially over the British attempts to restrict immigration of European Jewish refugees...
...Within the past six months, both of the Post's co-editors have resigned, as has the managing editor...
...But Frenkel irrevocably resigned with a blast...
...On that date, an editorial note by Rath appeared entitled, "A Note of Farewell...
...News and World Report publisher Mortimer Zuckerman bested this with an offer of $3.8 million...
...Agronsky, an American Jewish journalist who arrived in Palestine during World War I, became mayor of Jerusalem in 1955, when he was elected on the Labor Party ticket under his hebraized last name, Agron...
...The Post must have been a plum for other reasons...
...He made a special effort to convince Shlomo Maoz, the former economic editor, to stay but he has been wavering...
...From a purely business viewpoint, Hollinger grossly overpaid...
...in some cases, Rath was told, these holdovers were in their 70s and 80s...
...Serious expressions of interest came from overseas tycoons like the Canadian billionaire Charles Bronfman and British publisher Robert Maxwell...
...The defections were especially damaging to the Post's economic section, leaving it undermanned and leader-less...
...Ehud Ya'ari, Israel television's Arab affairs correspondent...
...Levy attempted to minimize the significance of his letter to the Editor's Committee...
...In 1950...
...Richard Pratt, the Australian financier who failed to acquire the Post, is putting up the requisite funds—said to be $4 million...
...In February of 1948 British and Arab conspirators bombed the newspaper's offices and presses in retaliation for Jewish resistance to British Mandate policies...
...After three weeks, during which there was no contact whatsoever between them, Rath said he was abrupdy advised by Levy in mid-October "to expedite the process of your retirement...
...and David Bar-Ilan, the celebrated concert pianist whose personal links to publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch enable him to publish La'Inyan, or 'To the Point...
...Nor is there any question that the new ownership was unsympathetic to the left-of-center stance previously assumed by the paper, often reflected in severe criticism of the government and its policies both in suppressing the intifada and in Likud's hardline position of refusing to exchange "land for peace...
...It was scheduled for publication in the international edition but was struck by publisher Yehuda Levy: Like other democratic leaders, Prime Minister Shamir upholds the idea of a free press...
...The trend seems clear...
...In 1975, when editors Erwin Frenkel and An Rath took over, the Post began to evolve in a more independent and often left-wing direction...
...He implied that in the future he would appoint himself the Post's "responsible editor...
...Rath promptly cleared his desk and office and left the city room where he had worked for the preceding 31 years...
...Stigmatizing the press has, therefore, become a favourite political sport, relished by, though not restricted to, the prime minister's party...
...As Rath himself observed, "What the Likud could not do by going through the front door, it did by way of the back door...
...One of the mysteries of the story is why Hollinger offered so much for the Post...
...The Post's former military correspondent Hirsch Goodman has teamed up with three other prominent Israeli journalists—Ze'ev Schiff, Ha'aretz's military analyst...
...Frenkel wrote a sharp rebuttal to a scathing assault on the Post by Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir...
...He even suggested that "a non-Israeli outfit may know how to improve their properties in ways that may be strange to Israeli journalism...
...The Jerusalem Post, like the rest o( the Israeli press and the free press everywhere, ministers not to the government or party in power, but to the nation which the government serves...
...Hollinger recently purchased 43 percent of the outstanding 45 percent of the Post's shares for $4.3 million...
...One reason was doubtless the desire to own a prestigious, influential Jewish newspaper...
...Whether it was planned that way is another question...
...In one sense, the sluggish Israeli economy and the nation's intensified political divisions precipitated by the intifada are responsible for the current hemorrhaging...
...Rath decided to make life easy for Radler by offering to step down if only for chronological reasons...
...Now we are breaking even...
...Many believe there were domestic political objectives in Levy's enlisting of Radler and the consequent input of Hollinger's financial resources to rescue a financially troubled newspaper...
...The newspaper's weekend magazine has been transformed into a sleek, full-color supplement...
...According to Levy, the new owners acquired the paper because they were interested in its potential for growth—expansion of circulation and advertising—and eventual profitability rather than in its editorial character...
...The handwriting was already on the wall in July when Levy stated in an interview with the weekly Yerushalayim, an insert in the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot's Jerusalem editions, that editorial independence is "a farce...
...When we took over, the newspaper was losing 200,000 shekels per month ($100,000)," Levy said...
...It was at that point that I decided that if I want to function properly as publisher I had to intervene in the editorial domain as well...
...The former Post staffers who quit en masse The Post Editorial that Levy Nixed The following is an excerpt from an editorial by Erwin Frenkel that appeared in The Jerusalem Post, daily edition, on November 30, 1989...
...In a very real sense, The Jerusalem Post portrays Israel to the outside world...
...In a press release, the Post stated that its attorneys were "considering] legal action against some of the persons who resigned from the paper this month in view of their actions and words during and after their employment...
...This, white he commands a party rent by discord, a government split down the middle, and a public polarized over his policies...
...And on Tuesday it was once again singled out for public opprobrium by the premier and some of his disciples at a meeting of the Likud Knesset faction...
...I promised Erwin Frenkel that I would not interfere in the editorial process," Levy went on...
...He said he would continue working as long as that principle is upheld...
...That so important and influential an asset should be put on the block was "incredible" to former co-editor Ari Rath who left his post on December 1, 1989...
...Others argue that this puts Israeli public opinion up for sale—and not only to Israeli Jews, but to the highest bidder world-wide...
...At least 60 employees were dismissed during the first six months' of Levy's reign...
...In retrospect, Rath and Frenkel say that it was more than a clash of personalities...
...The massive entry of foreign capital into Israel's media parallels the opening of major industrial firms, including government-owned companies such as the Israel Chemicals Corporation, to overseas investors...
...The first issue is scheduled for June...
...Despite Levy's unilateral deletion from the international edition of Frenkel's editorial reply to Shamir, a tenuous modus vivendi was reached between Frenkel and Levy, made possible by Levy's statement in an interview that there had been no editorial changes "up to now...
...If Rupert Murdoch and Lord Thomson can own dozens of periodicals outside their native Australia and Canada, there is no reason why their Jewish or non-Jewish counterparts who harbor good will toward the Jewish state should not be allowed to acquire Israeli media properties, so the argument seems to run...
...Levy also talks about turning the Post into a worldwide Jewish newspaper, published simultaneously in various languages—French, Spanish and Russian...
...This is a clearcut sign of the degeneration and decline of the labor movement in Israel," he said, arguing that Koor should have unloaded other properties to overcome its gigantic debts to overseas creditors (among them several leading American banks) before divesting itself of The Jerusalem Post...
...In sustaining its independent editorial views and the independence of its reporting...
...Those who subscribe to this argument point out that a significant segment of shares in the Palestine Post Company and its sister firm, Jerusalem Post Publishing, were purchased in 1961 by three American-Jewish financiers—Louis Boyar, Sam Rothberg and Julian Venetzky—who constituted themselves as the Israel Investment Corporation...
...He has less patience for its independent ways...
...It has...
...To his surprise, Rath was informed that here, as in its other acquisitions, Hollinger preferred to continue working with its acquisitions' former owners and editors...
...Kessel deferred to then-managing editor David Landau, who in turn was rejected by Levy...
...The Post's new owners also have ideas for expansion and improvement...
...Among the companies Black controls is Hollinger, Inc., which owns over 200 daily newspapers in North America, as well as the conservative British publications, The Telegraph, Encounter and The Spectator...
...The day after Frenkel's resignation nine veteran colleagues, including David Landau, the Post's erudite managing editor, quit...
...But both Rath and his co-editor Erwin Frenkel suspected from the outset that their editorial hegemony would be challenged at best and canceled at worst...
...By how much is suggested by the fact that the next highest bidder offered barely more than one third of Hollinger's bid...
...The 28 "rebels," as Levy loyalists dubbed them, reacted instantly by submitting letters of resignation which would terminate their employment at the Post in 30 days unless Levy was dismissed as publisher...
...His charismatic manner and intellectual stature evidently evoked intense loyalty and admiration, to the point that 28 staff members could not see themselves staying behind after his departure...
...Levy had spent much of his life in Israel's army, retiring as a colonel...
...This pushed Frenkel to the brink of resignation and prompted his loyal and admiring colleagues on the editorial staff to accuse president and publisher Levy of violating the assurances given them by Radler on behalf of the new owners that they would not interfere with the newspaper's editorial judgments...
...Australia's Richard Pratt made an initial offer of $2.6 million...
...Oddly enough there have been no audible complaints on the op-ed pages of Israel's locally owned Hebrew dailies about a potential clash between the outsiders' political preferences and the state's national priorities...
...It continued as a Zionist voice...
...In addition to English-speaking Israelis and tourists, it is read regularly in embassies, government offices, legislatures, powerful organizations and by Jewish community leaders around the world...
...Black and Radler surely knew that the Post was losing nearly $1.5 million a year...
...Before his resignation, Frenkel himself apparendy felt that the Post could be entrusted to foreign investors...
...A few days later, Frenkel's resignation sparked an editorial rebellion in the Post's city room...
...Then on April 18, 1989, a bid came in from part of an empire headed by another Canadian billionaire, Conrad Black...
...See box on page 25...
...According to Levy, the co-editors had become accustomed to what was tantamount to absentee ownership, in which Koor and other Histadrut labor federation functionaries virtually let them run the business as well as the editorial side completely on their own...
...A new English daily called The Nation provided only weak and short-lived competition to the Post, and recently died after publishing for barely 16 months...
...During the mandatory two-week cooling off period, Levy asked Yoram Kessel, a Former Palestine Post Has Distinguished History Israel's only daily English-language newspaper was founded in 1932 as The Palestine Post...
...THE JERUSALEM POST Transformation OR DISINTEGRATION JAY BUSHINSKY The recent transformation—or is it disintegration?—of Israel's only English-language daily newspaper, TheJerusalem Post, is a story of high finance, politics, the clash of strong personalities and questions of journalistic integrity...
...For, claiming a monopoly on patriotism, they would discredit dissent This newspaper, because of its reach abroad as well as at home, has been a preferred target...
...But whatever ultimately happens to this proposal, it won't help TheJerusalem Post...
...Levy also threatened the departed with lawsuits...
...Initially, Radler pledged to maintain the paper's editorial independence...
...It was Levy who had encouraged Hollinger, through his friend Radler, to purchase the Post...
...In an apparent effort to achieve his financial objectives, Levy hired a new team of executives to replace the veterans who had run the business operations for 30 years or more...
...When word reached the international business community that the Post was up for sale, offers began to come in thick and fast...
...For 31 years, he said, the Post reported "the news as it really is...it had the courage to speak the truth and to state views which were not always popular....As the quest for peace became a realistic option during the past decade, The Jerusalem...
...Israeli expatriate Aryeh Genger (reputedly a protege and crony of the right-wing Likud party's Industry and Trade Minister Ariel Sharon) was willing to put up $8 million...
...Government spokesmen justify this policy as an excellent means of developing the economy...
...It may well be that the whole saga testifies to Shamir's unusual ability to accomplish his political objectives without involving himself personally in the nitty-gritty, or dirty work...
...Whether this argument applies to the media seems not to worry most Israelis...
...The reason is plain enough...
...Meanwhile, Levy gave the depleted, remaining staff a solemn pledge that he would not interfere with their journalistic output by imposing his editorial slant on their stories...
...Recently, it has been critical of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his Likud party's right-wing politics...
...Post always attempted to sound a voice of reason in Israel's painful national debate in the hope that good sense and moderation will eventually prevail....It is my fervent hope that the values which have guided The Jerusalem Post to this day will also direct it towards its future tasks," he wrote...
...Levy's pledge failed to impress the Israel Journalist Association, which later instructed its members not to fill vacancies on the Post staff...
...Rupert Murdoch's low profile, but dominant stake in the giveaway Hebrew weekly La'Inyan is another example, as is Pratt's interest in the new Time-type weekly...
...Hollinger, Inc., fired the 60 employees soon after its takeover for this very reason...
...To add to the Post's current woes, it will soon have some new competition...
...But I thought the line Erwin adopted was extreme unless he would be willing to publish it as a signed editorial under his own name...
...If the publisher felt he had the authority and mandate from the proprietors to preside over the newspaper's editorial voice whenever he saw fit, there was, I explained, no reason for delay...
...After Levy left that position, he worked as manager of a travel agency...
...senior staffer, to take over as acting editor...
...N. David Gross, who agreed to come back from retirement to serve for three months as managing editor, said Levy got rid of the nine "ringleaders," but allowed the other 19 "rebels" to reconsider their resignations until the 30 days were up...
...The Palestine Post reported the events of World War II to the Allied troops in the Middle East, but also served as a voice for the Zionist leadership...
...I said I would act as a quiet publisher— that I would talk to the editors without trying to impose my will on them...
...Yossi Sarid, a leftist Knesset member, has recendy proposed legislation that would forbid the sale of Israeli media properties to foreign companies...
...Rath authorized its publication in his caparity as editor and managing director, tides he officially held until that date...
...and Ze'ev Chafetz, former director of the Government Press Office—to put out a weekly news magazine modeled on Time znd devoted to topics of particular interest to Jewish readers in Israel and, especially, overseas...
...In his editorial Rath hinted that he had serious doubts about the newspaper's future role in Israeli journalism...
...It won't be easy, however...
...Many critics of the Post's former management and personnel policy contend that it had accumulated an excessively large number of employees...
...Left-wing cynics maintain that Israel's most valuable economic assets are up for sale...
...editorially, advocated political and territorial compromise over the areas captured in the Six-Day War as a vital interest for the ultimate security and welfare of the Jewish State...
...He should then take the tide himself or hire an editor willing to speak in his voice," said Frenkel...
...Levy was appointed president and publisher once the purchase was made...
...This newspaper has consistently dissented from the Likud's territonalism...
...I did not say a word about the attack against Shamir in the deleted editorial...
...And just as the press is weighed by the responsibility of that task, so a democratic government and a democratic political party, and its leader, even in an embattled society like Israel, are enjoined to uphold, not discredit, the legitimacy of that task...
...A stormy general meeting was called and a subsequent vote confirmed the existence of a "work dispute," which in Israeli labor-relations terms usually is the prelude to a strike...
...I am acting as economic editor," Gross, an amiable British-born veteran said, confessing that economic stories were the only beat he never managed to cover during the four decades he spent at the Post...
...The Post's new owners immediately appointed a new president and publisher, a man named Yehuda Levy, who has no background in journalism...
...The editors acted as if they were the owners," Levy said...
...Since taking over the position of president and publisher, Levy has, on the one hand, denied that he intends to "change the paper from left to right" and, on the other hand, asserted his right to control the paper's editorial policy...
...No one questions the power of the Post, despite its relatively small circulation— 25,000 on weekdays, 55,000 for the Friday weekend edition and 65,000 for its international weekly edition...
...It may be this, but it is also a bitter batde over editorial policy...
...Although the Post was never controlled by the Labor Party— unlike the Hebrew language daily Davar, which serves as a mouthpiece for the Mistadrut (the party's labor federation)—nearly all of the Posfs editors have leaned toward Labor's policies...
...He too was unhappy with some of the Post's dovish positions, so the new magazine can be expected to be more centrist than the Post used to be...
...A newspaper's owners have the right to see that its editorial line is "balanced," Levy was-quoted as saying, and editors can be replaced if necessary...
...In the past year, Robert Maxwell acquired a controlling interest in Maariv and Los Angeles realtor David Wilstein provided the mercurial funding for The Nation...
...According to some, the featherbedding was as much as one-third of the staff...
...During the weeks following Rath's departure, a showdown erupted over editorial policy between Frenkel and Levy...
...For by making that explicit, he had, in essence, already displaced the editor...
...The final price for 55 percent of the store was $17 million, plus the assumption of $3 million of TheJerusalem Post's debt...
...A Zionist repository of olim from the entire Diaspora, of native Israelis, of Orthodox and non Orthodox, it has yet become choice quarry for this monolithic passion...
...As of this writing over 25 other senior editors and long-time reporters have quit—or been fired—leaving the editorial end of the paper not only headless, but nearly shoulderless...
...And that is without having increased circulation in Israel or abroad and without a concomitant rise in advertising revenues, but simply by trimming the work force...
...Although Black is not Jewish, the head of Hollinger, F. David Radler, is...
...Rath mentioned three prominent figures to the far right of Israel's political center as having been particularly interested in Levy's taking control through Hollinger's financial resources—Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a rising star in Likud ranks...
...Its stories were sometimes checked by high-ranking officials, and some news articles had to be approved by the foreign ministry or prime minister's office prior to publication...
...Neither of them was accustomed to having a boss at arm's length...
...rather than submit to Levy's managerial style reportedly have found prospective investors willing to harness their journalistic talent for a new English-language daily that would uphold their editorial principles and political views...
...But at the same time, Rath contends, Levy launched a war of nerves against him, virtually ignoring his existence and avoiding conversation with him...
...Levy seized the opportunity to purge the newspaper of his ideological foes and professional critics by ordering nine of them, including Kessel and Landau, to leave the building by 5:00 p.m., from which they were thereafter barred...
...Tzvi Harry Hurwitz, a former South African Zionist Revisionist activist and former editor of the South African Zionist Record, who serves as an adviser to Prime Minister Shamir...
...at his request, his name disappeared from the Post's masthead, although his official defection was December 1, 1989...
...Joel Greenberg, whose sympathetic coverage of the Palestinian intifada stirred widespread disapproval among Israel's hawks and plaudits from its doves, not only remained at his post but also declared at the subsequent staff meeting that no one had tried to alter his copy since Levy took charge of the newspaper...
...Radler also pointed out to Rath that Levy would have the title of president and publisher "so as not to infringe on the present editorial titles...
...Levy's diagnosis of the strains that developed in his relationship with Rath and Frenkel, as given to this reporter, is somewhat different from their version...
...Over the past five years, as a dovish liberal voice under the direction of Rath and Frenkel, the Post began to write editorials critical of Labor's stances...
...Goodman left the Post long before the recent upheaval...
...It all began when Israel's financially troubled Koor Industries, an arm of the national labor federation Histadrut, which is in turn controlled by the Labor Party, decided to sell its controlling (55 percent) interest in the Post to provide desperately needed cash...
...the publication changed its name to The Jerusalem Post...
...Frenkel's editorial rebuttal to Shamir's accusations appeared in the daily edition of the Post and was scheduled to appear in the international weekly edition—until it was deleted at Levy's initiative...
...Intent on public consent for his policies, he equates dissent with disunity, even disloyalty...
Vol. 15 • April 1990 • No. 2
