Paying The Piper

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Israeli spin controllers have their hands full. The government has suffered from a particularly bad public image over the years, thanks to such misadventures as the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the settlement of Israelis in occupied territories, stonewalling on the Middle East peace process and the ironfisted, often brutal, handling of the intifadeh. No wonder the Foreign Ministry launched a public relations campaign about a decade ago intended to package for international consumption upbeat stories on such subjects as Israeli science and medicine. Last week it was revealed that the country's legitimate public relations effort has been paralleled by a covert one: the New York Times reported that for years the Foreign Ministry has secretly paid free-lance radio reporters to do progovernment stories that were then marketed as objective news.

The government denies paying any journalists. But a former Foreign Ministry employee told TIME that top ministry information officials held weekly meetings with radio free-lancers. "The officials would decide what stories should be done that week," says the ex-employee, "and the reporters would then go out and do them. They concentrated on the good news from Israel. It was 100% clear that the radio programs were funded by the ministry."

Technically, the government may be right in saying it did not pay the reporters. Instead, it hired Jerusalem radio-studio owner Avi Yaffe, and Yaffe in turn hired the journalists. "The professional journalists work for me," insists Yaffe. "They get orders from no one. They work according to their professional consciences."

Those consciences, however, are apparently less than clear. The Times said that 12 reporters were involved in the project. But none have come forward, their names have not been revealed, and their colleagues are reluctant to talk to reporters about the situation. Said one journalist at state-run Israel Radio, where some of the 12 reportedly work: "I wasn't involved. I don't know anyone who was. That's all I will tell you." In the wake of last week's revelations, a clearly embarrassed Foreign Ministry said it was suspending its relationship with the Avi Yaffe Studio -- but it claimed the suspension came as the result of a "standard review," not because of the newspaper reports.

So far, the incident has not caused much of a stir in Israel. Editorial writers and politicians have avoided the subject. One reason is that Israelis are far less sensitive than many Westerners to charges of conflict of interest in news reporting. Another may be that the actions of the free-lancers, some of whom are presumably Israeli citizens, may be seen as the deeds of patriots rather than propagandists.

But foreign journalists are worried that Palestinian Arabs, who have long suspected that some reporters were in the pay of the Israelis, will now mistrust all newspeople. In response, the Foreign Press Association in Israel issued a public statement last week noting that it was "deeply concerned" by the disclosures, and saying that "journalists who are paid by the Israeli government, directly or indirectly, are discrediting the entire press corps . . . ((B))y accepting payments from the Israeli government ((they)) are taking sides in a story they are covering . . ." The whole episode is sure to make it harder for honest reporters to chronicle the continuing Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

With reporting by Robert Slater/Jerusalem