7 Examples of Gaza Media Coverage That Prove Pro-Israel Bias

Ask anyone who has followed news about Gaza with even a smidgen of critical thinking, and they will tell you: Media organizations are biased against Palestinians — and systematically favor Israel. 

It’s easy to say but harder to prove. Doing empirical analysis that shows these biases is time-consuming and complex, full of pitfalls and nuances that can muddy the picture. Yet the double standards are everywhere — and there are ways to do sober, qualitative work that elucidates not only the differences in how Israeli and Palestinian life are covered, but also also in how other recent conflicts are covered.

For my new book “How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza,” I attempt to demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that U.S. media coverage of the war on Gaza was one-sided, racist, dehumanizing, and often veered into outright incitement.

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I examined over 12,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN.com, Politico, Axios, USA Today, and The Associated Press, along with 5,000 TV segments that aired on CNN and MSNBC. The focus is on center-left media outlets influential with the Biden administration during the first year of the conflict — with an emphasis on the first few months, when Israel firmly established its narrative justifying the genocide, rendering mass death inevitable.

Here are seven statistical findings that prove the U.S. media’s bias against Palestinians.

Israel’s “Right to Defend Itself”

The media’s penchant for invoking a nation’s “right to defend itself,” typically followed by the rationalization of mass civilian killing, was reserved almost exclusively for Israel. On CNN and MSNBC, guests, anchors, and reporters mentioned the right to self-defense for Israel 94 times more than they did for Palestinians. In print media, Israel was afforded this right over 100 times more frequently than Palestinians in Gaza.

Watch a supercut below of the phrase being repeated on TV news.

“Human Shields” to Justify Killing Palestinians

News outlets frequently apply the term “human shields” to any instance where a guerrilla force operates near civilian infrastructure — a definition rejected by human rights groups, but used by partisans to explain away civilian deaths. That didn’t stop media outlets from invoking the term hundreds of times about civilians near Palestinian fighters, implicitly justifying their deaths in Israeli attacks. On the other hand, my analysis of TV news showed no mention at all of the Israeli military’s use of “human shields” — despite documented cases where Israel’s tactics meet the legal definition.

Emotive Words About Killing Civilians

Cable networks and print media outlets consistently applied a double standard in favor of Israel when using the terms “massacre,” “barbaric,” “savage,” and “slaughter” to describe the killing of civilians. Over a 100-day period that saw roughly 24,000 Palestinians killed, the use of these emotive words in the print media I surveyed was entirely in favor of Israel. (I only included instances when the words appeared in outlets’ own editorial voices, not when they quoted commentators or officials.)

Watch supercuts below of U.S. news personalities using the phrase “savage.”

Using “Hamas-Run” to Downplay Palestinian Deaths

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After the October 17 bombing of Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab hospital by Israel, media outlets almost uniformly adopted pro-Israel pressure groups’ pejorative qualifiers “Hamas-run” or “Hamas-controlled” to describe Palestinian death counts, thereby discrediting them. Neither CNN nor MSNBC used the term between October 7 and October 17, 2023, but it quickly skyrocketed in usage as the body count in Gaza grew — with the use of a related phrase becoming an official policy at CNN. This, despite the U.S. State Department, World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, and others’ long use of Gaza Health Ministry figures.

Sympathetic Victims: Gaza vs. Ukraine

Victims of Israel’s attack on Gaza who could be expected to elicit sympathy from audiences — like journalists and children — received little coverage during the first 100 days of Israel’s assault, compared to their counterparts in Ukraine.

Antisemitism vs. Islamophobia

While incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia were on the rise in the months after October 7, coverage focused almost entirely on antisemitism with little or no regard for anti-Muslim bigotry or how the mass killing in Gaza impacted Palestinians stateside. This was especially true on college campuses, where students protesting Israel’s war were tarred as antisemites in the mainstream press, while Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students who faced discrimination barely received any attention.

Campus Antisemitism vs. Killing Children in Gaza

For a poignant example of how Palestinians are dehumanized, consider the media’s treatment of former Harvard University President Claudine Gay in comparison to their coverage, or lack thereof, of the killing of Hind Rajab. Not long after Gay resigned under pressure from Congress amid a monthslong fixation on allegations of antisemitism on college campuses and allegations of plagiarism by Gay over 20 years prior, the Israeli military opened fire on a car carrying Rajab and her family and left the 5-year-old Palestinian girl to die. On the New York Times homepage, stories about Gay appeared in 15 of the 31-day period covering the height of the scandal, whereas Rajab didn’t appear once in the month that followed her death.