{"id":282288,"date":"2026-02-09T15:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T15:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282288\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T15:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T15:42:09","slug":"should-a-businessman-drowning-in-debt-be-allowed-to-control-a-major-israeli-news-channel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282288\/","title":{"rendered":"Should a Businessman Drowning in Debt Be Allowed to Control a Major Israeli News Channel?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-testid=\"rich-text\" class=\"x13faqbe x12ds5z6 x1rrzvkg x1txrjqu x115k1yo x126s5kd x1az39ph x1qxhirb xhhm3bp xjplvm8 x1ur7pbh x103ahzr x6ikm8r x10wlt62\">When reports emerged Saturday night that Channel 13&#8217;s controlling shareholder, billionaire Len Blavatnik, had decided to <a class=\"x1bvjpef x41m6fz xly1mqq x1k57tk5 x1i43xu1 xx6stda x15spe28 x1wntsoc xj69yco xfw692k xg830sg x13dflua xfagghw xz4gly6\" target=\"_router\" href=\"https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/opinion\/editorial\/2026-02-09\/ty-article-opinion\/channel-13s-emerging-deal-is-yet-another-step-in-netanyahus-media-destruction-project\/0000019c-3e98-d38a-a1dc-feb92ef10000\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">sell the company to French-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi<\/a>, an immediate assessment followed: namely, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had influenced the decision in Drahi&#8217;s favor over a competing bid from a group of high-tech entrepreneurs. Public attention quickly focused on the implications of the deal for Israeli democracy, and rightly so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When reports emerged Saturday night that Channel 13&#8217;s controlling shareholder, billionaire Len Blavatnik, had decided to sell the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,85,46,12109,69730,43],"class_list":["post-282288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-business-news","tag-israels-media","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}