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If Only the Ministers Would Come
Darren Garnick, New York
FLASH 90 |
More than a dozen Israeli government spokespeople are sitting in a room at the American Jewish Congress headquarters, watching an old "Saturday Night Live" spoof of "60 Minutes," in which a Mike Wallace impersonator is asking tough questions about counterfeit whoopee cushions.
"Wallace" accuses his interview subject, attorney Nathan Thurm, of being defensive. "I'm not being defensive," replies the jittery Thurm, sweating and nervously inhaling his cigarette into ashes. "You're the one being defensive. Why is it always the other person being defensive? Ever think about that? Why don't you think about that?!"
Next up on the VCR screen is footage of the real Mike Wallace, interviewing Chinese President Jiang Zemin about his government's human-rights record. Intermittently, as Jiang speaks, "60 Minutes" keeps flashing the unforgettable 1989 image of a student standing in the path of a tank in Tiananmen Square. "Did you admire his courage?" asks Wallace. That man, that lonely man."
The Chinese leader praises the "passion" of the demonstrators, but says that his country "could not possibly allow people with ulterior motives to use the students to overthrow the government." Smiling, he adds that he, too, was once a student protester - and sings a 1943 song opposing the Japanese occupation of China.
The tape stops rolling and Elias (Buck) Buchwald, a founder of Burson-Marsteller - one of the world's largest public relations firms - takes the floor. The Israelis - who have come from the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, the North American-based consulates, the U.N. delegation and the Israel Defense Forces to hear his advice - lean forward as the guru speaks.
Buchwald is full of admiration for Jiang's on-camera performance. "Instead of coming across as a farbissener Communist leader who would step on you like an ant, he kept his cool," Buchwald notes. "His face was still warm. There was only one thing he could possibly hope to accomplish here - show us he's a human being."
In screening the tape, Buchwald stresses, he is not trying to compare Israel's problems with China's or hold up Jiang Zemin as a media role model. Rather, he says, he's selected the "60 Minutes" clip to prove that even hostile interviews, in which the interviewee would seem to have little room for maneuver, can be defused and turned around.
This session with Buchwald, along with his PR colleague Marco Greenberg, is just one element of this year's annual AJC-sponsored workshop, in which the Israelis spend a week practicing the nuances of hasbarah - the Hebrew term which translates literally as "explanation" but can be used to mean public relations, education or propaganda, depending on your perspective. In addition to media training, the group visits with major news organizations and opinion leaders, discussing perceived imbalances in Middle East coverage with reporters and editors. This year's line-up included meetings with CNN, the Washington Post, MSNBC, the U.N. Human Rights Watch and the U.N. Secretary General's spokesman. "Most Israelis are missing the PR gene in their DNA," asserts Greenberg. "You really have to intrinsically care what the other side thinks of you, and they don't. It's ironic that most Madison Avenue PR firms are run by Jews, but that those skills haven't migrated across the Atlantic."
This year's workshop is particularly important, given Israel's ongoing efforts to show itself as more sinned against than sinning, in the nine-month conflict with the Palestinians. And so, while
the course has been strictly off-limits to journalists in the past 15 years - its participants, after all, are being trained in ways to manipulate the media - this year, The Report has been given access. The time has come for the Israeli government, Greenberg explains, to assure its supporters that it is making a serious, long-term effort to improve its image. "It would be grandiose to assume that this kind of workshop alone will solve the problem," he says. "But arming spokespeople with compelling messages and convincing answers is a small step in the right direction.
The trouble is, however, that the workshop caters exclusively to junior-ranking diplomats on their way up the career ladder (as, incidentally, does a similar media-training course run by the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem). So while their improved media skills might have some impact on local news coverage in selected North American cities, for example, it will have no effect on what the world will see on CNN or "Nightline." Those gigs are reserved for the highest-ranking spokespeople, politicians and generals in Jerusalem, a collection of talking heads who - with the stark exception of TV-performer extraordinaire Benjamin Netanyahu - are generally derided by the media professionals as overly gruff, defensive and macho, inarticulate in English and unconscionably reluctant to take any of the training courses. "I guess they're not prepared to take the browbeating I give these people," says Buchwald, sadly.
During the workshop, Buchwald actually tells the participants of his frustration with their bosses. He calls Israel's overall media handling "inept" and is outraged that, for the past decade, the government has ignored his suggestion that the heads of all the ministries meet regularly to agree on what their core media messages should be.
"Obviously," he says later, "the desirable thing would be to train the key faces of Israel, the officials at the highest levels." But since those top officials evidently regard themselves as masters of the craft, Buchwald has no alternative but to focus on the next generation. "We train whoever the Foreign Ministry sends us to train," he says. "And while the ministry can make sure that all the consulates send participants, nobody's going to tell a senior minister, 'Hey, you're a lousy speaker!'"
NAMED BY THE PR Week industry journal as one of "The 100 Most Influential PR People of the 20th Century," Buchwald developed the hasbarah workshop in 1986, to help try to counter hostile media coverage of the Lebanon War. Greenberg, an Israeli-American who has served as an IDF press officer and has worked for Israeli advertising giant Gitam BBDO, volunteered five years later. He now runs his own Manhattan agency, NYPR, catering to the high-tech sector.
Greenberg's message is tailored as if Israel is a high-tech start-up. "You are salespeople for the state of Israel," he tells the spokespeople. "You're not journalists. You're not analysts. You're not academics. Your job is to put the best face on Israel."
And the customer is public opinion. "Every time you open your mouth I want you to do a cost-benefits analysis. What do I have to gain, and what's the downside? If you explain that Hizballah missiles are from Iran and are not just a threat to Israel, but the entire Western world, then you get real 'buy-in' from people."
The Israelis learn the basics of being interviewed on TV, including the need to make eye-contact with the interviewer so as to avoid looking shifty, and to develop push-button responses to potentially hostile questions.
The most common of those in recent months has been, "Why are you killing children?" (The Israeli B'Tselem human-rights group says that as of early June 109 Palestinians aged 17 and under, and 17 Israeli children, had been killed in the conflict.) And Buchwald suggests a non-defensive answer: "It's a terrible thing for children to be caught in the violence. It's terrible when the Palestinians put their children on the front lines and then shoot from behind them."
Perhaps the central message imparted to the participants, though, is that it doesn't actually matter what the reporters' questions are, or which Middle Eastern event they are responding to. Every interview should be seen as a "tactical" one - an opportunity to broadcast the Israeli government's message to the public. "An interview," they are told, "is no place for original thought."
With that in mind, they are asked to brainstorm the issues they feel most need stressing in the current climate, and emerge with the following, Buchwald-approved, themes: 1. Israel and the U.S. share common values and goals. The same terrorism that strikes Israel threatens America. 2. Israel must do everything it can to protect its population. No other country in the world would tolerate the daily assault and killing of its civilians. 3. Israel longs for peace, and seeks a negotiating partner who also desires peace. Shootings on our roads and bombings in our cities do not demonstrate that desire.
BUCHWALD, WHO IS IN HIS 60s, does not appear to be an intimidating man - until he opens his mouth. "Who cares about what happened in 1967, for chrissakes!" he yells during one discussion, when a consulate spokesman has referred to the Six-Day War in the context of current violence in Gaza. Historical debates won't get fair play in a two-minute TV story about yesterday, he explains, slowly letting his voice retreat to a conversational tone. "Bring me to the push-button answer: 'We are eager to negotiate, but we cannot negotiate under terror.'"
Amira Oron, a deputy spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, says she appreciates Buchwald's gruff style. "It's not so quiet and cozy out there," she says. "We have to prepare ourselves for anything."
A common refrain of the Israelis is that the Palestinians are the underdogs in the conflict and that the media loves to report stories from that perspective. If that's the message coming across, says Buchwald, it's because the Palestinians are doing an effective job of communicating it. And he gives Palestinian spokespeople high marks for sticking to two vital PR principles: articulating a consistent strategic message, and relying on only a few well-trained, talented speakers. "In general, they're very good. But they have a much simpler story to tell."
For all the frustration that "top" Israelis don't take these courses, the fact that they've been running for 15 years now means that the graduates are gradually reaching senior positions. And Media Consul Yehuda Ya'akov, a 1997 participant who is based at the New York consulate and administers this course, believes it is making an impact. "The new generation is coming through," he says.
"We are more professional than we used to be," agrees Los Angeles Consul General Yuval Rotem, who took the course in 1989 when he took over as spokesman for the Israeli Mission to the U.N.
Even Buchwald says he is encouraged by a change in attitude among the diplomats. "In the early years, I used to have shouting matches with them. 'We're not selling soap. Israel isn't soap!' they'd say. It is a pleasure to work with them now. They've come a long way."
But not all the way. "Most of the problems we are dealing with in the U.S.," says Buchwald, "result from the inept and inadequate handling of media relations in Israel. What can we do about that here? Nothing. It has to be done in Israel."
(July 2, 2001)
Jewish World
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