How U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson is buying up Israel’s media
JERUSALEM — Las Vegas casino magnate and GOP super donor Sheldon Adelson is gambling on a new venture. On Wednesday, after the Israeli antitrust authority approved his purchase of two more news outlets, the Jewish American billionaire upped his ante in the country’s media market.
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With his latest purchases, Adelson will now also control the main religious daily, Makor Rishon, which caters to Israel’s Zionist religious right, and NRG, the news Web site of the Maariv newspaper, which has faced a multitude of financial woes in the past few years.
While the antitrust authority decided that Adelson’s acquisitions are not crossing any competitive red lines, media watchdogs (and not a few political pundits) worry about Adelson's growing influence. Adelson is an avid supporter and long-time friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“As a very strong backer of Prime Minister Netanyahu – not that there's anything wrong with it – Adelson owns a paper that is rarely, if ever, critical of the PM,” wrote Shmeul Rosner, an Israeli commentator, in Jewish Journal. “He now owns two papers, and one might suspect that now two papers will never be critical of Netanyahu.”
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