Clash of the media titans in Israel

Media Titan to Rivals: Drop Dead! That's tabloid shorthand for the Darwinian clash unfolding between Israel's three biggest newspaper barons.

The story begins with a publicity-shy publisher who built a paper so popular and powerful it was deemed a monopoly. Nipping at his heels is a scrappy businessman who once wiretapped competitors and later destroyed an incriminating document by swallowing it. But it didn't become a battle royal until a Jewish-American billionaire, borrowing a page from Fox News, launched a "fair and balanced" newspaper to counter what he called liberal media. "It's turning into a jungle," said Daniel Ben-Simon, a member of Israel's parliament and a respected former journalist. "The media organizations are trying to destroy one another."