Behind the Headlines a Dangerous Move

As a newspaperman who has spent the better part of six decades in Jewish journalism, I am disturbed by the news from Jerusalem that the Israel government and the World Zionist Organization are jointly establishing an official agency to serve the world Jewish press.

This is bad for Israel, bad for the Zionist movement, bad for the Jewish community and dangerous for the Jewish press. Never since the 1850’s when Baron Reuter established the first news agency in London has there been an official news agency that enjoyed credibility. Every dictatorship the world has known has sought to control information channels so as to be able to manipulate the news for its own purposes.

One effect establishment of this official agency will have will be to render suspect all the news from and about Israel flowing through Jewish channels. Only a small proportion of newspaper readers pay attention to the credit lines on news stories and all the news dispatches in the Jewish press, consequently, will be tarred with the “official” brush.

AN ATTEMPT TO CONTROL THE NEWS

Both the Israel government and the WZO will be accused of an attempt to control the flow of information–which they will be doing, not by censorship but by selection of the information to be relayed to the Jewish world. No one expects an official agency to report developments that reflect on its sponsors unfavorably. This agency will not disappoint its critics in this respect in the words of the popular ditty, it will accentuate the positive and in so doing, seek to conceal what the authorities consider negative aspects.

It will be bad for the Jewish public which will be deprived of information to which it is entitled and ought to have. This will not be the result of censors blue-pencilling unfavorable copy but because the flood of “positive” news will swamp the limited space available in the Jewish press and crowd out hard, potentially disturbing facts.

As a former editor, I know the pressure on every journalist to select a good upbeat story with a lot of human interest as compared, say, to a critical report on the economic situation, or difficulties on the West Bank. There is a lot of good journalistic talent in Israel today and the new agency will have no difficulty in finding the skilled journeymen to produce good, well-written human interest stories.

The American Jewish press, in most cases not too generously budgeted, will be tempted to rely heavily on the official agency for its low-cost or free news and features. The service will thus discourage independent reporting and further limit the perspectives the individual paper can offer its readers.

The World Zionist Organization press service already produces a large volume of news features which the Jewish press uses extensively, often, I fear, to the exclusion of more important but less attractive material that could give the American Jewish reader a better understanding of the situation in Israel.

I am concerned about the impact the official service may have on a large segment of the American Jewish press. This press has made great strides in the last half-century since Philip Slomovitz and a handful of his contemporaries founded the American Jewish Press Association and gave it professional standards.

The Jewish press has won a substantial measure of credibility and acceptance in the community and professional acceptance in the wider field of American journalism. This should not lightly be jeopardized. I would not want to see it diminished because of a general perception of the American Jewish newspapers as merely purveyors of Israeli government propaganda.

The Jewish Agency public relations establishment and the Israeli government’s PR setup as well have never really understood that they cannot “sell” Israel to American Jews as a land of unadulterated milk and honey and that they can win greater loyalty and support by treating them as adults and giving them the facts, unvarnished and unadorned.

The type of promotion that “sells” Israel for El Al–the bikini-clad beauties on the beach at Eilat–may be very effective in persuading tourists to savor the pleasures the Jewish State offers but it is not the way to convince most Jews of Israel’s vital role in their lives.

NOT THE FIRST ATTEMPT

The new agency is not the first attempt to control the flow of news from Palestine and dominate the news columns of the world Jewish press. Early in the 1930’s, the Jewish Agency Executive started its own news agency and spent a few million on the venture.

The Palcor (Palestine Correspondence) Agency never made a deep penetration of the Jewish press. Its only accomplishment was to weaken the Jewish Telegraphic Agency which had valuable outlets in the general press through its contracts with the Associated Press, Reuters and Agency France-Presse, and thus reduce the effectiveness of a major voice.

One of the first acts of the Israel government after the War of Liberation was to suspend the Palcor operation. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett quickly perceived the anomalous position of competing with the news agencies and foreign correspondents while simultaneously trying frantically to secure their goodwill and sympathy for the infant State.

There are legitimate news functions that every government, including the Israeli, should perform. These are, fundamentally, to provide all possible access to news sources subject to security needs, to ensure freedom to transmit and publish without censorship of any kind except the minimum required for security reasons and to provide facilities to transmit news from the country speedily and inexpensively.

A USEFUL SERVICE

The late Gershon Argon, editor of The Jerusalem Post and Israel’s first de facto Minister of Information, recognized this and in 1949, using the JTA radio network, supplied Israeli Embassies and Consulates throughout the Western world with a daily synopsis of Israeli newspaper editorials and articles.

This service also provided the texts of official communiques that might not otherwise be available to the press abroad. The Israeli offices, in turn, distributed these summaries to the press just as the British and German information services do to this day. A service like that from Jerusalem today would be useful and free of the propaganda stigma that attaches to an “official” news agency. A full, honest and free flow of information from Israel, warts and all, is the best propaganda the Jewish State can have. Instead of trying to spoon-feed the Jewish press, the government should facilitate the task of journalists seeking to inform the Jewish community by encouraging them on their own to explore, investigate and report every facet of Israeli life.

Nearly 100 years ago, the great American publisher, E.W. Scripps, put this motto on his papers: “Give light and the people will find their way.” It is a precept still valid for all governments and news media.