The Map of Media Ownership in Israel is an ongoing project by the Seventh Eye. Its goal is to portray, explain and track the identities of tycoons, corporations and other entities that hold Israel's media companies and outlets. The map helps its viewers perceive who holds what in Israel's media market, and gives a glimpse of the holders' other holdings as well. The map portrays the web of interests that entangles Israeli media, including cross ownerships and the level of market concentration.
The map's first edition was published in Hebrew in late 2006, as a double spread on one of The Seventh Eye's last print issues. Its second edition was published in 2013, with the launch of The Seventh Eye's renewed website. The third edition was published in late 2014, in the midst of a vivid discourse about the restructuring of the TV broadcast market. The Current edition, the first to be translated to English, was published in March 2016, an era in which the Israeli media market seems fragile than ever.
The Map of Media Ownership in Israel. Click to view the full map
For readability reasons, the map underwent a simplification process. Owners and shareholders often hold their stocks through holding companies and complex ownership structures. A map that will aim to depict them all is bound to end up as a huge web of entities that many of them are mostly bureaucratic mechanisms. This kind of a map is bound to hide more than it exposes. For this reason we also decided not to name some of the minor shareholders in some of the companies that inhabit the map.
View The Map of Media Ownership in Israel (pdf)
Research and production: Itamar Benzaquen. Design: Harel & Maayan Studio. The Map of Media Ownership is an ongoing project by the Seventh Eye, and it's updated frequently according to the changes in the media market. The seventh Eye invites its readers to offer additions, corrections and updates.