A Working Man

by Ricky Mulvey

I walked in the office where I will be working for the next several weeks and saw two large pictures: one of Vladimir Putin, and one of Barack Obama. I do not know about the office politics of where you work, but it’s probably not like this.

Life is a little more diverse in Israel.

The place I started at  is a small news wire agency in the heart of Tel Aviv. We are the teacup sized version of Reuters.  It’s okay though. I love being there.

I have more freedom than a lot of other internships I know of, the office has a beautiful overlook of Tel Aviv, and I will get to help cover some very interesting stuff.

Our main clients also offer an interesting predicament for me. I am an American teenager with a fingernail grasp on the Middle East and we sell a lot of stories to Russian and Asian news agencies. I am not too familiar with what businessmen in Singapore want to hear about and am a little afraid of what stories I want to sell to a part of the world that does not have the most positive outlook toward Israel.

They are challenges that will be fun to face though. My hope is that I will be able to insert a small dose of balance into, what I perceive as, an unfair media landscape toward Israel. As the country with the most journalistic freedom in the  Middle East, Israel has had that freedom bite them in the tuchus a little bit. People are not afraid to dig when there isn’t a fear of imprisonment.

With that said, I do look forward to using this opportunity to explore Israel’s darker side. Today I talked to a former special forces soldier about my desire to get to the West Bank or explore the sectarian conflicts in Jerusalem. He looked at me like I was crazy. “The West Bank is a total shithole.” He told me.  Maybe I am crazy, and maybe it is not possible, but I hope that there will be a post in the future about me speaking broken Arabic in a place that is not exactly welcoming to us Jews.

I have already done the touristy stuff in Israel. I want to peek behind the curtain now.