Group gets the facts to reporters

RON FRIEDMAN

In the Middle East, sometimes the harshest fights don't take place in the battlefield. Israel has often been criticized in the media for its actions, actions it sees as necessary for security, but which the media describe as purely aggressive. One of the most difficult challenges for Israel is getting the world to see things from its perspective. To that end, a group came together six years ago to form the Israel Project. Its mission: to educate the press and the public about Israel, while promoting security, freedom and peace.

It all started in Houston, in the spring of 2002, when roughly 300 Jewish family foundations agreed to channel their frustration with the way Israel was being portrayed into finding a solution. The impetus came from a woman named Jennifer Lazlo Mizrahi, an American communications expert with lots of Washington experience. "I said, 'Look, I know how to solve the problem, but we'll need to pool together,'" said Mizrahi in a phone interview. And they did. And this was how the project began.

Mizrahi believes that the core of the problem doesn't lie in purposeful bias or intentional distortion, rather in a lack of knowledge. "Basically, our whole core principal is: get reporters the facts and information before they do their stories, so they can get the stories right," said Mizrahi.

With offices in Washington and Jerusalem and one recently opened in Sderot, the Israel Project is strategically located to help provide journalists with information that they can readily use. "Every time a reporter comes to Israel, we try and roll out a welcome wagon to them by introducing ourselves and letting them know that we're going to give them factual information," said Mizrahi. "Now we have relationships with many reporters that people had thought for years might have been anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic, when really what they were was not informed."

Sometimes it's not only a case of being uninformed. Sometimes journalists are intentionally misinformed: "There's a huge anti-Israel propaganda machine out there, with about 20 different groups giving reporters false information, or sometimes it's factual, but very selective in which facts they give."

Mizrahi feels that one of the most important things is gaining the trust of the reporters. "If you look at all of the things that we send out to journalists, everything is meticulously footnoted. We assume that the reporters will not trust us unless we use a third party to prove the point. We see that so long as we footnote our information, that we are not ideological in our statements, that we don't make judgments, that we just let the facts speak for themselves, reporters are happy to use them."

Aside from providing reporters with facts they can use as they like, the Israel Project's staff try to help journalists by providing them with sources. They organize press conferences for beat reporters in the United States, as well as for foreign correspondents in Israel.

"During the Hezbollah war, we set up a media office in the north [of Israel] and serviced the journalists. You could see that journalists would show up, they'd get off a plane, they'd never been to Israel in their lives and all of a sudden they're supposed to translate exactly what's happening and they're supposed to put guests on TV. Well, how are they going to find an English-speaking person who lost a family member to terror, if there's not somebody who is thinking about making that connection happen?"

One of the initiatives that the project has recently undertaken is something they call "intellicopter" tours, two-and-a-half-hour helicopter tours with expert guides who give reporters a bird's-eye view of the situation on the ground - an initiative that Mizrahi thinks has been extremely effective. "When we take off from Herzliya, you can see Ramallah and you can see the fence and you can see the Mediterranean. And in between are Netanya, Tel Aviv and Herzliya. For reporters, until they see it, they just don't really comprehend. And once they see it, they get it in a new, transformative way." So far, the project has taken more than 700 foreign reporters on the tour.

Another recent endeavor that the Israel Project has undertaken has been to expand their coverage in anticipation of Israel's 60th Independence Day. Mizrahi said that, whereas in the past, reporters showed no interest in covering non-conflict stories, claiming that their editors didn't send them to Israel to write about good news, "because of the anniversary and [U.S. President] Bush's visit, we know that there will be retrospective or introspective pieces on Israel in the mainstream media." Today, beyond the usual intelligence briefings, press releases and analysis papers, you can also find on the Israel Project's website material about diversity, women's rights, health care and the environment. "We're trying to push the envelope to get people to think about Israel differently, so that maybe there will be an opportunity to tell different stories later," said Mizrahi, while acknowledging that "good news is hard to sell."

Mizrahi pointed to evidence that all the project's hard work has paid off. She cited polls that the organization has conducted in the United States, asking who voters think their government should support, Israel or the Palestinians. The polls show that from 2002 to today there was a rise, from 24 per cent in support of Israel then to 71 per cent last month. "This means that about 15 million Americans had changed their minds to be more supportive of Israel," said Mizrahi proudly.

Mizrahi sees the role of the Israel Project as important in a wider perspective. She believes that, by creating a more positive image of Israel in the media, her organization can help battle anti-Semitism, level the playing field vis-a-vis the anti-Israel camps, and promote a more positive Jewish identity among young Jews.

^TOP