I’ve seen some strange things in my time, but the Mideast Dig’s opening days* are among the strangest. It bills itself as an “independent” investigative news operation, but right from the start its independence has been compromised.
(*not “opening days” at all; it’s a renamed website that flopped. See update)
A few weeks ago I posted here that the Mideast Dig planned its opening reception at the home of the Israeli Consul General in New York, Ido Aharoni. A copy of the flyer is at the bottom of this post.
Aharoni proudly posted 22 pictures of the opening reception on his official Facebook page. An image from it is at the top of this post. He does not point out that this was the debut of the website and that this was clearly a fundraiser.
The website claims to not accept money from governments. But I don’t see much difference between taking cash from the Israeli government and its Consul General hosting an event like this.
Mideast Dig is headed by Richard Behar, a contributing editor at Forbes who has blogged many times on Israel for Forbes and has also written a cover story. He is assisting Forbes with its “Under 30” summit taking place now in Israel.
Mideast Dig purports to be a 501c3 and is soliciting donations from the public. It is not mentioned in his Forbes.com bio, and his LinkedIn bio bills him as “Contributing Editor of Investigations for Forbes magazine; Book on Bernard Madoff — to be published by Simon & Schuster.”
Why would I as a donor want to pay him a salary when his first allegiance is to Forbes and Simon & Schuster? It’s no concern to me, as a donor, if these two conflicting engagements don’t pay him a living wage.
Behar has only press criticism on his site. The market for that is saturated. What he has published is so shrill and condescending, and open in its pro-Israel bias, that it is unlikely to have much impact. Behar has yet to publish the investigative journalism that he promises.
One question I would ask as a donor is if he has libel and D&O insurance. He has been sued for libel in the past, including an immense suit by Scientology. His departure from Fortune in 2004 coincided with publication of a long editor’s note on a story he wrote in 2000 that prompted a libel suit in London.
As a donor I would ask about his management experience. He has managed to get himself into an awkward situation with Aharoni. If he doesn’t feel it’s awkward, that’s worse.
Two weeks after the consulate reception I checked, and I didn’t find a listing for a “Mideast Dig” in either the New York charity registration database, the New York Secretary of State Business Entity Database, or the Internal Revenue Service charity database.
I noticed yet another strange thing after I first posted this. The contact person in the flyer is Rhonda Barad.
Rhonda Barad was among the people who intervened with the New York State Attorney General on behalf of William Rapfogel, who looted $9 million from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. The letters received scathing publicity in Nonprofit Quarterly a few months ago. Investigative reporter Wayne Barrett wrote an article on this shameful episode: “Love Letters for Willie Rapfogel.”
You don’t expect a target of investigative journalists to be involved in an investigative journalism enterprise.
Updates:
I began this blog by saying that Mideast Dig was in its “opening days.” I was wrong. It’s actually a relaunch of a previously existing nonprofit, the “Mideast Reporter,” that was launched in 2013.
I saw an article by Behar in Forbes on Israeli cybersecurity, and circled back to Mideast Dig. Googling, I discovered that Behar is trying to pull a fast one on potential donors.
The Mideast Dig is not new, contrary to the impression left by the site itself and its marketing. It is a renaming of an existing nonprofit, “Mideast Reporter.” That’s why I came up blank running “Mideast Dig” through databases.
If donors run its tax ID number (46-4772869) through the New York State Charity Database they come up with the Mideast Reporter’s name and filings from early 2014.
Google further shows this article, and this one, which says it was established in 2013. The old “Mideast Reporter” site is archived, with 17 captures over a 13-month period in 2015 and 2016. “Reporter” and “Dig” have the same detailed mission statement. The only difference between the old and new websites is that “Dig” has fewer people, a new logo and a tweaked slogan (“An Oasis in the Wasteland” became “Dispatches from the Media Wasteland.”)
A Facebook search produces a slew of publicity, postings and articles from the Mideast Reporter, indicating clearly that it is the same as Mideast Dig.
The only difference seems to be that it is smaller. The co-founder, managing editor and one of the two independent board members are gone and have not been replaced, leaving the board with just two members. Dig claims it is “governed by a corporate board,” but that board is just Behar and someone else. That is not an acceptable level of oversight for a serious public charity.
Evidently the site under its former name, “Mideast Reporter,” failed to raise money, so Behar changed the name to “Mideast Dig” and pretended that it was a brand new entity. Rewriting history, he calls himself “founder.” You have to “dig” to find out that Behar is pretending this is a new venture when it is not. But you don’t have to dig very far, because Aharoni labels the fundraiser “Mideast Reporter event.”
Apparently the Aharoni fundraiser didn’t work. In the months after posting this item I received increasingly desperate fundraising appeals from Behar, and the site itself has been moribund.
One fundraising appeal on Thanksgiving 2016 sought $30,000(!) “to sustain our operations through next summer.” On Dec. 22 came another appeal, this one for $10,000 “to sustain our operations through Spring” via a ten-day GoFundMe campaign. It was an embarrassing failure, raising just $665.
I can see why he’s having trouble raising money.
- The site is inactive; its Alexa rank was 14 million in early 2017.
- Poor corporate governance, lack of transparency, lack of financial disclosure, no staffing. He has two “contributing editors” that haven’t contributed and aren’t investigative reporters.
- He doesn’t explain why his “operations” would consume such a large amount of money, when he’s not doing anything and his site is duplicated by many other websites.
- The content contradicts the mission statement, by not delivering investigative reporting as promised, just armchair quarterbacking of news coverage.
- By way of “results” he claims he shamed a Reuters reporter to stop tweeting. How is that an accomplishment? Tweets are a valuable insight into how reporters think, and that spigot has been turned off.
His December fundraising flyer talks about keeping his “operations” going so he can apply for “journalism grants.” I doubt that donors would buy this argument. You don’t need a lot of cash to apply for grants. The fees are nominal. But even if he did apply, I doubt journalism foundations would fund a media criticism site that “names and shames” journalists.
Donors are not going to support a thinly disguised hobby. They would not like that he writes about Israel for Forbes, competing with his own nonprofit. But the big turnoff, I suspect, is that he is not being honest about the fact that he started this several years ago and it flopped.