Distribution of the Israel Hayom newspaper in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Freedom House had been one of the remaining, objective arbiters of which countries are free and which are not. A few years ago, I had shown that there was no correlation between how free a country was according to Freedom House, and how much attention it received from the anti-Israel Human Rights Watch.

Unfortunately, Freedom House seems to have fallen prey to the politically correct anti-Israel crowd.

Its new report on press freedom (embargoed until later this week) changes Israel’s rating from “free” to “partly free.” And the reasons it gave to justify this are, by any measure, bizarre.

Israel declined due to the growing impact of Yisrael Hayom, whose owner-subsidized business model endangered the stability of other media outlets, and the unchecked expansion of paid content — some of it government funded — whose nature was not clearly identified to the public.