The reporting of media outlets affects people’s perceptions of events. Usually, states and other actors biasedly report information to influence people politically and create false pictures of situations. The Israel-Hamas conflict is among the most recent events that the media has tried to manipulate to favor the stories of the different sides. Media sources supporting the various players in the issue have been involved in spreading information differently to influence people’s political views about the conflict. The Western media and governments that are sympathetic to Israel have participated in reporting that depicts Hamas as a terrorist organization that has targeted Israel, a peace-loving nation that only wants to protect itself and its people. The difference in the reporting of the issue by the western and middle-eastern, and other media that sympathize with Palestinian people shows how media reporting is an important aspect of the world’s response to various issues.
Media from western countries like the UK and the USA have been sympathetic to Israel and chosen to focus mostly on justifying Israel’s attacks on Gaza. The Western sources include CNN, BBC, and FOX, among others. They have reported using respondents from the ground and sources from the Israeli government to support their stories. Even though the conflict is not new and there is much history in the conflict, western media outlets focused on the attack that Hamas participated in on October 7. According to a CNN article that was published on October 9, the attack by Hamas led to the death of at least 260 people (Murphy et al., 2023). according to the report, people heard rockets early in the morning before they saw Hamas militants with riffles shooting at them. The CNN story covered the same story as an Aljazeera one published on October 10. However, the two stories differ in detail and the language used. In the Aljazeera story, the article focuses on what happened, where it occurred, and who was involved. It also mentions that the militants breached the Gaza border to enter Israel, a land that is restricted to them to commit the killings. On the other hand, the CNN story is longer and uses various phrases that aim to paint the incident as very serious. For instance, the author quotes a person who said the attack was ‘Like a shooting range’ (Murphy et al., 2023). Even though the articles present the same information, the CNN story’s usage of descriptive phrases apart from the interviews and starting the article with a video of the attack adds emphasis on how the fighters were inhuman and worked better to rally the world against Hamas and Palestine.
The Western media focused on the inhumane nature of the attacks on Israel while downplaying the extent of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza because of the siege that has been placed on the land and its residents. The language used in various Western sources like CNN and MSNBC also supports bias against Gaza (Peters, 2023). For instance, comparing the shooting of the victims by Hamas to shooting in a range rather than connecting the incident to a conflict that has existed for years since the Jewish resettlement in the land supports the idea of Hamas being a merciless terrorist group that kills people for sport. For instance, CNN reported false information that Hamas had beheaded forty babies. However, the journalist apologized later after realizing that the news was fake.
Even among the Western mainstream media, there is a difference between the reporting of the far-right media like FOX and the left-wing media like CNN. According to Peters (2023), a New York Times author, Jewish people had shifted their attention to Fox because it was perceived as sympathetic to them as compared to the other liberal sources like CNN that were seen as harsh. For instance, the author said that CNN and MSNBC broke the news about Israel’s attack on the Jabaliya neighborhood. This neighborhood hosts many refugees and children. Fox focused on other events and downplayed the attack. Therefore, Fox was less critical of the extremes of Israel as a state actor than the left-wing media. Fox has linked the attacks to antisemitism and justified its favoritism of Israel in the conflict as a fight against antisemitism. For instance, Fox criticized the Whitehouse communication against Islamophobia. Jesse Watters, a host on Fox, also claimed that “…we have had it with them” while referring to Muslims (Peters, 2023). The openly biased reporting against Hamas, Palestine, and Islam in general from Fox supports the idea that Israel is right in killing thousands of people as retaliation for Hamas killing about a thousand people and kidnapping them. Fox also labeled Hamas as rapists and rapists in an article and called for the world to call Hamas out while not acknowledging the significantly more ruthless killings of civilians and refugees by the Israeli army (Eglash, 2023). Therefore, the Right Wing Media was more critical of Hamas and more sympathetic to Israel despite both Left and Right-wing media generally favoring Israel in the conflict.
Among the meddled East media and other pro-Palestine media, even though they are condemning Hamas’s attacks on the innocent, there is much focus on the atrocities that Israel is committing in Gaza in response. They are also using sources that oppose Israel’s invasion. For instance, Al-Jareeza on November 18 was, “Hamas had not planned to attack music festival, Israeli report says” (Al-Jazeera, 2023). The heading downplays the seriousness of the initial attack by Hamas against Israeli civilians. In another article by al-Jazeera, the authors criticized how the Western media spread misinformation to favor Israel in a conflict in that both sides were involved in atrocious activities. The source claimed that Western media “dehumanize Palestinians” and seemed to legitimize the brutal relations of Israel on innocent people. The source criticized how sources like CNN had spread fake news like the beheading of 40 babies even when there was no evidence to support it. The source also includes a picture that shows how Gaza is surrounded by a perimeter that was fortified, and Palestinians were restricted from moving outside or being killed. The source gives a background of the aggression by Hamas and also sympathizes with how, while Israel victims were called “victims”, Palestinians who died were hardly called “victims” by the Western media (Al-Jazeera, 2023). Therefore, while Al-Jazeera called out Hamas, the writers were also sympathetic to Palestinians and pushed for their rights.
In conclusion, the coverage of the Israel-Hamas war by the Western media has been biased against Palestinians and Hamas. Most of the sources, especially Right-wing sources, have given more attention to Israel as the victim while labeling Hamas as a terrorist group despite the complicated background between Israel and Gaza. The language used has aimed to show Hamas as merciless killers and Israel as victims defending themselves. However, left-wing media have been more critical of Israel. Middle Eastern-owned source has been more critical of Western coverage and pushed for Palestinian rights.
References
Murphy, P. P., Goodwin, A., & Brown, B. (2023, October 9). Desert horror: Music festival goers heard rockets, then Gaza militants fired on them and took hostages. Retrieved from CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/07/middleeast/israel-gaza-fighting-hamas-attack-music-festival-intl-hnk/index.html
Al-Jazeera. (2023, October 29). Western coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza – bias or unprofessionalism? Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/29/western-coverage-of-israels-war-on-gaza-bias-or-unprofessionalism
Peters, J. W. (2023, November 3). Jewish Viewers Find a Refuge in Fox News. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/business/media/fox-news-jews-israel.html
Al-Jazeera. (2023, November 18). Hamas had not planned to attack music festival, Israeli report says. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/18/hamas-had-not-planned-to-attack-israel-music-festival-israeli-report-says
Eglash, R. M. (2023, Nov 19). United Nations slammed for silence over Hamas rapes, mutilation and murder of Israeli women, critics say. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/world/united-nations-slammed-silence-hamas-rapes-mutilation-murder-israeli-women-critics-say
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