[8] According to the Center for Research Libraries, among Israel's daily newspapers, "Haaretz is considered the most influential and respected for both its news coverage and its commentary.

[11][12] The newspaper was established on 18 June 1919 by a group of businessmen including the philanthropist Isaac Leib Goldberg,[13] initially called Hadashot Ha'aretz ("News of the Land").

It was closed briefly due to a budgetary shortfall and reopened in Tel Aviv at the beginning of 1923 under the editorship of Moshe Glickson, who held the post for 15 years.

Schocken was active in Brit Shalom, also known as the Jewish–Palestinian Peace Alliance, a body supporting co-existence between Jews and Arabs which was sympathetic to a homeland for both peoples.

[21] The Schocken family were the sole owners of the Haaretz Group until August 2006, when they sold a 25% stake to German publisher M. DuMont Schauberg.

[24] On 12 June 2011, it was announced that Russian-Israeli businessman Leonid Nevzlin had purchased a 20% stake in the Haaretz Group, buying 15% from the family and 5% from M. DuMont Schauberg.

[28] According to The Guardian, Haaretz "had published a series of investigations of wrongdoing or abuses by senior officials and the armed forces, and has long been in the crosshairs of the current government.

[43] David Remnick in The New Yorker described Haaretz as "easily the most liberal newspaper in Israel", its ideology as left-wing and its temper as "insistently oppositional".

[45] Stephen Glain of The Nation described Haaretz as "Israel's liberal beacon", citing its editorials voicing opposition to the occupation, the discriminatory treatment of Arab citizens, and the mindset that led to the Second Lebanon War.

[46] A 2003 study in The International Journal of Press/Politics concluded that Haaretz's reporting of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was more favorable to Israelis than to Palestinians but less so than that of The New York Times.

[47] In 2016, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, wrote: "I like a lot of the people at Haaretz, and many of its positions, but the cartoonish anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism can be grating.

[50] Apart from the news, Haaretz publishes feature articles on social and environmental issues, as well as book reviews, investigative reporting, and political commentary.

[58][59] In 2007, Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz's former U.S. correspondent, told The Nation, "people who read it are better educated and more sophisticated than most, but the rest of the country doesn't know it exists.

[60] Andrea Levin, executive director of the pro-Israel Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), said Haaretz was doing "damage to the truth" and sometimes making serious factual errors without correcting them.

In response, the Israeli interior, education, diaspora ministries severed ties with Haaretz while the Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi advocated a boycott of the newspaper covering all government bodies and employees.

The two sites offer up-to-the-minute breaking news, live Q&A sessions with newsmakers from Israel, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere, and blogs covering a range of political standpoints and opinions.