For those seeking to explain to Americans who don’t know what type of newspaper Haaretz is, in terms of its political orientation and its perspective on lsrael, Israel supporters will typically explain it as the New York Times of Israel. And they don’t mean that as a compliment.
The same is true in the other direction: the New York Times is the Haaretz of the United States.
What this shorthand means is that the two papers are frequently viewed (mostly by their own readers) as the paper of the elite, the intellectuals, the academics. And it also means that the two papers are consistently unflattering to Israel – even at the expense of accuracy – whenever possible.
For abundant examples, just take a visual tour through CAMERA’s website. CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, has expanded its reach and not only monitors U.S. media sites for inaccuracies regarding Israel, it also monitors the press in Britain, Spain, and now in Israel.
But both leftist papers have been struggling economically over the past several years. One astonishing fact revealed at a CAMERA event held in Jerusalem earlier this week revealed that only 4.8 percent of Israelis read Haaretz – an infinitesimally small number, especially compared to the high regard in which Haaretz holds itself.
So it was less of a shock than it might otherwise have been, but still a surprise to see that the New York Times has now officially teamed up, at least in terms of subscription piggybacking, with Haaretz.
Notices were sent out to those on the New York Times email list offering a special: all New York Times readers can now get a 40 percent discount on a one-year subscription to Haaretz, and the new subscribers will pay only $1 for the first month of the subscription.
In addition to revealing how desperate both papers are for additional subscribers, it is worth noting that even people who only subscribe to online news alerts from the Times received the offer. In other words, it is not a stretch to believe that the Times includes those alert-only subscribers in reporting to advertisers the number of its subscribers, thereby inflating the numbers.
But here’s a question: why would readers of the New York Times want a subscription to Haaretz? They are already receiving all the negatively-slanted information about the Middle East from the Times.