Meretz head says Yedioth blacklisted her for not backing bill

Responding to a column in Yedioth Ahronoth in which she is attacked for not supporting a proposed law which would have squeezed Israel Hayom, Meretz head Zehava Galon wrote on Facebook that the newspaper threatened her and then punished her by putting her on a blacklist.

The allegation comes amid reports that Yedioth publisher Arnon Mozes tried to reach a deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for positive coverage in exchange for support for the bill, which would have banned free papers as a way to push Israel Hayom out of the market.

“Months before the vote I got calls from lobbyists, PR people and even acquaintances. The message was simple: If I don’t support the bill, Yedioth will erase me. In those words. ‘You will not appear anymore in Yedioth,'” she writes.

“They promised and it happened. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve appears in Mozes’s paper since then. Journalists who worked at Yedioth tell me that articles on me would suddenly disappear during editing, and stories that mentioned me would be cut. I went on their blacklist.”