The executive director of a nonprofit media watchdog organization said the powerful international media misrepresent Israel.

Gary Kenzer, national USA executive director of HonestReporting, encouraged audience participation during his presentation Tuesday night in the Molecular Biology Auditorium.

Kenzer said he wanted people to look at pictures differently from how they have before and that he wanted them to recognize the power of words.

“I think Israel really stinks at this battle. It’s one of the reasons why an organization like ours was created,” Kenzer said.

He said HonestReporting, which focuses on media bias against Israel, was bent on ensuring that Israel got “fair and accurate representation” in the international media.

“We look at the stuff that comes up about bias, and we educate people and we affect change through action,” he said.

Kenzer said he did not want anyone to think that Israel was without fault, however.

“This is a country that is not a perfect country. Israel is not perfect in its actions,” he said. “Perfection is not a prerequisite of rightful existence or fair treatment at the hands of the international community and its media.”

Kenzer said the problem with media bias is that it influences the perceptions of others.

“So what happens if you read something, whether it’s true or not – and you read it often – whether or not it’s true? What happens in your reality?”

“Fact,” an audience member said.

Kenzer said any time people are repeatedly exposed to something, it will influence their perception.

Kenzer talked about eight categories of media bias, including distortion of facts, lack of content, opinions disguised as news, misleading, inconsistent terminology, and definitions and selective omission.

He then showed a number of photographs that had inaccurate captions that were not full representations of the action in the phot

Kenzer said part of the problem was that photographers often do not get to caption their own photos.

“They may be able to describe the pictures to their editors, but they do not caption their own work,” Kenzer said.

The enormity of the Internet as a search engine is part of how and why inaccuracies are perpetuated, he said, which is why it is important to point out misleading information in the news – even media from another country.

“I have to listen to the BBC eight hours a day,” Kenzer said.

He said part of his job is to monitor the BBC for problems in its coverage of Israel.

“The media is huge – it has a strong influence on public opinion,” Kenzer said. “Public opinion – and in this case we’re talking about Israel – can easily be swayed one way or another and, ultimately, public opinion influences foreign policy.”