Yes, Sherri Mandell, For Journalists, We are Just Pawns

Koby Mandell

My story isn't as horrific as the one that Sherri Mandell tells:

How Brian Williams (and Tom Brokaw) betrayed my family
Read more: How Brian Williams (and Tom Brokaw) betrayed my family | Sherri Mandell | The Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-brian-williams-and-tom-brokaw-betrayed-my-family/#ixzz3RHVEAygE Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | How Brian Williams (and Tom Brokaw) Betrayed My Family

Just in case you've forgotten or just don't know who Sherri Mandell is, she is the mother of Koby Mandell, HaY"ad, who was brutally murdered, along with a friend, by Arab terrorists one day when they were hiking near their homes in Tekoa.

There's a line in her article that hit me like a deja vu hammer. Brian Williams asked Mandell and her husband if they had a gun. When they answered in the affirmative, Williams requested that they bring the gun so he could photograph them with it.

About thirty years ago, one day, someone, actually a handful of people knocked on our door. I was home with four out of our five children.

"Hello, we're from time ink."
"Time ink? I thought to myself. What's that."
I must have looked rather confused, because they quickly said:
"TIME Magazine."

Then I understood.

They came in to the small crowded house we lived in at the time. And they asked me questions. After three years in Shiloh I was pretty experienced in handling journalists, though I looked more like a harried housewife amateur.

Among the benign ordinary questions they asked, suddenly they asked if we had a gun.

"Yes," I answered.
"Can you show it to us?"

I had visions of a photograph of me with a gun and a baby on the cover of TIME Magazine. I may have an ego, but I also have common sense. Such a photo would not be good at all in terms of Hasbara, Israel's and more specifically Jews of YESHA's information campaign.

"I don't know where it is," was my reply.

A couple of weeks later I saw the article in the magazine. I wasn't mentioned at all. I consider it a draw. They couldn't find any way to make me look bad, so they left me out of their article.

Some People Should Be Muzzled

hat tip my husband

This New York Times article has me bothered. For a few days I've been mulling over how to deal with it. No surprise, my perspective may be a little different from most.

We've been living in Shiloh for twenty-seven years, and within a short time I found myself, not only spokesperson, but the one who escorts various media personalities/journalists during their visits to Shiloh. Even though, it has never been a paying job, I always took it very seriously.

I discovered very quickly, that most people are naive and are easily manipulated to give answers the reporters like, even if it makes the person look mean, stupid, racist or dangerous. A polite, smiling reporter can easily win the trust of your average person. And equally dangerous, a mean, aggressive reporter can get a person to say something extreme, which he/she doesn't really believe.

Yes, I can give a course in how to be interviewed. A couple of important rules:

• Never use sarcasm. Your words speak for themselves and they can be used out of context against you.
• You don't have to answer every question. There's nothing wrong with saying that you don't answer theoretical questions, only about actual facts on the ground. In addition you can refuse to answer a question which presumes something which isn't true.
• Don't give ambiguous answers which can be interpreted opposite of what you really mean.
• Be suspicious of the journalist. Don't confide. They aren't your friends, even if you like and trust the person who introduced you.

Now, there was something else about that article which bothered me. The tour seemed almost identical to the one I went on with Helen Freedman, of AFSI. Reading carefully, I realized that the same person led it. The group I was with was sympathetic, in favor of Jews settling all of Eretz Yisrael. We were sincerely happy and encouraged by what we had seen. We had no negative-ulterior motives.

Isabel Kershner, of the New York Times, was looking for things to mock and it was obvious that she'd distort the words and actions of the Shomron residents to give a negative impression. People should have been warned. People should be suspicious and refuse to cooperate, unless they really know how to control interviews.

I have no doubt that Kershner was very pleased with the tour...