Corporate media of all stripes have rushed to support the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran, throwing objectivity and accuracy by the wayside in order to manufacture consent for regime change.
In the first six weeks of the Israel-Gaza conflict, major U.S. newspapers disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7.
The stakes for this routine devaluing of Palestinian lives couldn’t be higher: As the death toll in Gaza mounts, entire cities are leveled and rendered uninhabitable for years, and whole family lines are wiped out, the U.S. government has enormous influence as Israel’s primary patron and weapons supplier. The media’s presentation of the conflict means there are fewer political downsides to lockstep support for Israel.
Journalists on major papers are blocked from truth-telling about Palestine and the apartheid practices of Israel. Such censorship in top American newspapers is troubling – and not unprecedented.
In Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Palestinians are presumed guilty; settler violence is invisible. The Washington Post perpetuates the myths.
The Washington Post claimed, in spite of clear evidence to the contrary, that Israel had never destroyed Palestinian Covid clinics. In fact Israel is guilty of this and a multitude of other human rights abuses – as a pandemic rages, and with financial support from the US.
The best way to remedy the inordinate harm the Iran sanctions do, would be to lift the sanctions, but few in the corporate media are making this rather obvious point.(Israel and its partisans have long targeted Iran.)
Alison Weir reports: The Post says there had been “weeks of relative quiet,” even though Israeli soldiers had shot over 100 Palestinian civilians, killing four of them; conducted 400+ invasions of the Palestinian Territories; abducted dozens of Palestinians; perpetrated air strikes on Gaza; shot at fishermen and farmers; demolished Palestinian homes; tortured a Palestinian mother; and shot a small boy in the eye… Are Post Editor Marty Baron and reporter Ruth Eglash too close to Israel to report the full, unfiltered news?
Corporate media like to present themselves as holding the current administration to account, in reality they offer little meaningful resistance to its foreign policy adventures.
Standard Operating Procedure: top news outlets reporting on the Golan Heights issue have failed in their journalistic duties: euphemisms, partial truths, and omissions abound.
A FAIR study finds that major US news outlets rarely mention the Right of Return, although it is a primary part of the Israel/Palestine issue. In the last ten years, only 0.01 percent of coverage of Palestinians or Palestine in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post informs its audience about the right of return or even mentions it at all. When they do mention it, they generally imply that it is not a legitimate, UN-conferred right; or they describe the exercise of that right as an act of aggression/national “suicide” for Israel.