Israel Hayom is an Israeli national Hebrew-languagefree daily newspaper, and news website. First published in 2007, Israel Hayom is Israel's most widely-read newspaper.
History
Israel Hayom's print edition was launched on 30 July 2007 and competed directly with Israeli, another free daily. The same year, Maariv editor Dan Margalit left the newspaper to write for Israel Hayom. A weekend edition was launched in October 2009. In 2014, Israel Hayom bought Israeli media outlets Makor Rishon and nrg מעריב. On May 2014, the name מעריב had been removed from nrg log, and it was rebranded as nrg. Following the acquisition an antitrust complaint had been failed against Israel Hayom, which resulted in a court order that requested to transfer the maariv domain name to Maariv weekly. In 2017, nrg was renamed to nrg360, and on 10 January 2018 the website had been closed and all its content had been merged into the Makor Rishon website. In 2014, it was believed that Sheldon Adelson invested in total at least $50 million in Israel Hayom. Adelson's support of Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu has led the latter's political opponents in the Knesset to sponsor a bill that would prevent the distribution of newspapers in Israel for free. Framed as a bill to prevent unfair competition and save the Israeli print newspaper industry, critics of the bill said it hurts free enterprise and is a thinly veiled attempt to target Adelson and his political causes, as Israel Hayom is Israel's only free-of-charge national newspaper. The bill passed the first reading in the Knesset, but not subsequent ones. In 2016, Adelson's attorney announced that although it is commonly believed that he owns the newspaper, he does not, it is owned by a relative of his.
Political leaning
A 2008 study by Moran Rada published in The Seventh Eye showed that while competing newspapers' coverage of Benjamin Netanyahu was "not especially fair", Israel Hayoms coverage was biased in favor of Netanyahu in most editorial decisions, that the paper chooses to play down events that do not help to promote a positive image for Netanyahu, while on the other hand, touting and inflating events that help promote Netanyahu and the Likud. Oren Persico reached the same conclusion after the 2009 Knesset elections, writing that throughout the campaign, Israel Hayom published only one article critical of the Likud, and tens of articles critical of Kadima. The popular nickname of Israel Hayom is the "Bibiton", a portmanteau of Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname "Bibi" with the Hebrew word for newspaper, "iton". While in the Prime Minister's office, Ehud Olmert criticized Israel Hayom. Journalist Ben-Dror Yemini has described the paper as having "endless capital with a political agenda". In 2016, it formally endorsedDonald Trump's presidential campaign.
Market share
In July 2010, Israel Hayom surpassed Yedioth Ahronoth in weekday exposure rate in the semi-annual Target Group Index survey with a rate of 35.2% compared with Yedioths 34.9%. After only a few months of publication of a weekend edition, it scored it 25.7% of exposure compared with Yedioths 43.7% rate.
According to the TGI survey published in 2016, Israel Hayom has 39.7% weekday readership exposure, Yedioth Ahronoth 34.9%, Israel Post 7.2%, Globes 4.6%, Maariv 3.9% and Haaretz 3.9%. In January 2016, citing internal records from Israel Hayom, Haaretz revealed that between 2007 and 2014 the newspaper lost about 730 million shekels, approximately equal to one shekel per copy printed.
