Anyone who has followed Western media trying to understand the heartbreaking images and stories coming out of the Gaza Strip during the Israeli invasion is bound to be disappointed.
Since the start of the recent Israeli attack on the besieged Palestinian enclave, which has proven to be one of the swiftest acts of ethnic cleansing in history, Western news outlets have repeatedly published unsubstantiated claims. , have only told one side and selectively exaggerated the violence. Justifying Israel's violations of international law and protecting it from scrutiny.
In doing so, Western journalists have abandoned basic standards when reporting on Israeli actions against Palestinians. None of this is new. The failures of Western journalism have helped Israel justify its occupation and violence against Palestinians for more than 75 years.
On August 6, 2022, more than a year before Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, The New York Times published a particularly egregious break from good journalism in its reporting on Palestinian “flares.” It destroyed the initiative over the deaths of six Palestinian children. “The battle between Israel and Gaza.”
In their report, the journalists waited until the second paragraph to mention that six children were among those killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and then added text. “Israel has said that some of the civilian deaths were due to covert filming by armed groups,” he added. “Weapons were planted in residential areas,” and “in at least one case, a Palestinian rocket misfired in northern Gaza, killing civilians, including children.”
In journalism schools, this is recognized as “breathtaking” reporting. And it turned out to be a false report. Ten days later, the Israeli military finally admitted that it was behind the attack that killed the Jabaria children.
The New York Times breathlessly failed to report on this.
This may sound unprofessional, but it may be true, as coverage of this conflict in Western media is clearly shaped by ideology rather than rigorous fact-checking. But such an assessment would obscure an even deeper problem with Western journalism: its coloniality.
Conflict reporting is one of the most crowded corners of the world's largest newsrooms. Even in racially diverse newsrooms, reporting on conflict can be difficult. But the egregious mistakes that seem to have slipped through the editorial filters of newsrooms that pride themselves on the accuracy of their conflict reporting need to be explained. It must also be put on record that through these consistent mistakes, Western journalists are not simply reporting on the Palestinian conflict, but “mediating” it.
I would be remiss if I didn't call this a “textbook example of colonialist journalism.” It is a journalism conducted by practitioners of colonial powers with a heightened sense of self, proud of their imperial conquests and whose every fiber has been nourished by centuries of predatory accumulation of wealth, knowledge, and privilege. It is. These journalists seem convinced that their country has fought and defeated particularly immoral and powerful enemies throughout history, halting evil, protecting civilization, and saving the day. This is the dominant narrative of the West and, by extension, the narrative of Western journalism.
But the dominant narrative is often not the true story, but simply the winner's story.
And today, Western media are once again telling the story of the victors in Gaza, just as they have so often reported on conflict, crisis, and human suffering in postcolonial countries.
I've seen this in coverage of tropical diseases by reporters who know that malaria, dengue, and Ebola will never flow through their veins or affect their communities. After the Rohingya genocide, I saw a genocide survivor being asked if she was held down by five men or seven men during a gang rape.
Western journalism is essentially winner's journalism. Never deconstructing the story, putting it in the right order, or adding relevant context to speak truth to power and expose the continued excesses, aggression, and violence of the “winners” there is no. of history.
And when it comes to Palestine, it's journalism about the occupation by people who will never know what it's like to live under occupation. It is voyeuristic reporting that lacks a moral compass or a foundation of common sense.
In colonizer journalism, language is a weapon used to erase the humanity of the colonized. In The Wretched of the Earth, an analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization, the philosopher Frantz Fanon describes the suffering of Algeria (during the French conquest of the empire) as described in media coverage as “hysterical masses.” He wrote that it is described as a “horde of vital statistics.” Children who seem to belong to no one. ” Although the book was written in his 1961, its reasoning applies perfectly to Western media coverage of Palestinian suffering today.
This use of dehumanizing language is most evident in the death count. In early November, the Times of London reported that “Israel marked one month since the start of the war in which Hamas has killed 1,400 people, kidnapped 240, and left an estimated 10,300 Palestinians dead.'' Reported. In Western news, Israelis die actively – Hamas “killed” or “murdered” Israelis – while Palestinians die passively. As the Guardian once put it, they “die of dehydration when they run out of clean water.” As if this were an accidental act of God rather than a deliberate crime against humanity.
According to Western propaganda, Israel has the right to destroy Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and other countries in the region to protect the safety of Israelis. Targeting Hamas could kill nearly all Muslims, ceasefire-seeking Jews, UN workers and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) doctors, journalists, ambulance drivers, and even babies. . But if the only way we can feel safe is by raining death and misery on millions of people, no news outlet will discuss what that means for Israel and the world. Almost none. None of them, as we now have a world divided between “us” and “them,” the colonized and the colonized, are willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands of innocent children. I've never meaningfully questioned whether a victory achieved at the expense of would count as a victory. Victory first.
In this sophisticated war propaganda, Western journalists obscure the truth we face here – Israel, supported by the world's most powerful military, lives under occupation. They say they are waging war on stateless people and crushing innocent men and women. And thousands of children. The story of how Western governments enabled this genocide while preaching to the world their superior values, common sense, and love of democracy. Anyone living in a post-colonial world knows that all their talk of love for decency, democracy, exceptional journalism, and decent politicians is nothing but a scam.
In these late hours, when wars are raging, children are starving, and Israel is on trial for “plausible genocide,” it is vitally important to point out the blood on Western journalists' hands. In full coordination with powerful governments, they denigrate and disempower multilateral institutions like the United Nations, give a veneer of respectability to Israeli “self-defense” narratives, and render Palestinian stories and perspectives irrelevant. Relegated to something.
A minority of Palestinians, given a platform in the name of “balance” and good journalism, have been deterred from discussing the decades of oppression, occupation, and abuse they have endured at the hands of Israel. They were only allowed to weep for their dead relatives and plead for more aid to feed their starving children – after blaming Hamas, of course.
Perhaps with this war, the battle for Western journalism has finally begun. As they monitor Israel's war in Gaza on their social media feeds and see for themselves what is happening through Palestinians' own reports and testimonies, more and more people around the world are turning to colonial powers, their language , and the role of Western media in the perpetuation of colonial power. ideology.
Lately, there has been growing criticism of how Western leaders have failed, but not how Western intellectuals have failed, particularly those who lead the West's most influential news organizations. It's not talked about enough. It is not only Western liberalism and the rules-based order that have been reduced to rubble as a result of Israel's war in Gaza, but also the legitimacy of Western journalism.
In their coverage of the Gaza war, Western news outlets consider mass death, starvation, and endless human misery to be acceptable and even inevitable when inflicted by the allies. This was clearly shown. They showed that the conflict journalism practiced in Western newsrooms is nothing but another form of colonial violence, realized through words rather than bombs and drones.
In this moment of overwhelming barbarism, journalists of color like myself are being flogged by the monumental morality of the newsrooms we are told to respect. All Western journalists, with their immense power, can do now is demand a permanent ceasefire and prevent another step in colonial journalism.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.