Analysis: US Media Coverage Biased toward Israel in Reporting War on Gaza
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A recent analysis has unveiled a pattern of "systematic bias in favor of Israel" within Western media coverage of the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip.
This scrutiny highlights the tendency of certain news agencies to "dehumanize Palestinians" while legitimizing the occupying regime's actions in the besieged area.
According to an Intercept analysis, major American newspapers, influential in shaping US perspectives, notably underreport Israel’s severe actions and blockade in Gaza. The study gathered over 1,000 articles from key outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, focusing on the usage and context of specific terms.
The findings underscore a stark imbalance in how Israeli and Palestinian perspectives are portrayed, heavily favoring Israeli narratives. Despite the disproportionate Palestinian casualties, coverage emphasized Israeli deaths. Emotive language characterizing Israeli fatalities starkly contrasted the descriptions used for Palestinian deaths.
Even amidst the deadliest conflict for children in modern history, scant mention of "children" and related terms were observed in surveyed article headlines. The presence of terms like "journalists," "reporters," or "photojournalists" in headlines was notably limited, appearing in only a small fraction of the articles studied.
Reacting to the survey, Arwa Damon, a former CNN correspondent and now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, condemned these "double standards," identifying them as part of a broader depiction of Muslims and Arabs as "less than human" in Western media.
Experts and journalists further highlighted the irreversible damage caused to the credibility of these ostensibly "mainstream" news agencies among Arab and other audiences due to this biased coverage.
The conflict erupted when the Israeli regime initiated a war on Gaza following Palestinian fighters' Al-Aqsa Storm operation in response to Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. The continuing military campaign has killed more than 23,000 people, most of them children and women. Nearly 59,000 Palestinians have also been wounded. Over 100 journalists have lost their lives in the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli military aggression, while a complete siege imposed by the Tel Aviv regime has exacerbated living conditions for over two million Palestinians in the territory.