CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

How the Media Aligned Themselves with Israeli Propaganda

Dima Khatib, photograph by Nelson Pereira.

Journalistic coverage of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza after October 7, 2023, continues to draw sharp criticism. Syrian-Palestinian journalist Dima Khatib minces no words: “The media actively relayed Israeli propaganda.”

“Silence is already complicity. But it was worse. It was active engagement with Israeli propaganda,” said the Managing Director of Digital Projects at Al Jazeera, whose journalistic career spans more than three decades.

“And it was an active engagement against journalists themselves,” Dima added. “Not once, not twice, it was repeated. The justification Israel gave for the killings of journalists—obviously false and unacceptable, that is, every time they were terrorists, they were guilty, they deserved it, etc.—it was celebrated, it was lauded.”

Dima, who has reported from over 30 countries across 5 continents, interviewing presidents and people from all walks of life, points to a clear bias in the media in favor of Israel’s official narrative. “The media weren’t even doing their basic job of verifying this information, simply relaying lies against Gazan journalists. And this was proof of racism against journalists who don’t have the skin color required for journalists, at least in the mainstream media, to do their job. We’re not asking for more; we’re asking them to verify the information and publish it.”

Noting that when a journalist is killed elsewhere, it causes an uproar, she denounces the media’s indifference to the murder of Palestinian journalists. “It’s an unspeakable scandal. 262 journalists (*) have been killed in Gaza—a record, a real massacre. Just look at the major media outlets here in Europe, in the United States, and even in the Global South, and see how many times this information has been relayed, published, and reported correctly and ethically.”

Journalism That is No Longer Journalism

According to Dima Khatib, the “poor” media coverage of the killings of journalists in Gaza demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Palestinians are not considered equal human beings. She admits that this experience was a huge disappointment and a source of great sadness for her.

The same pattern of disinformation has been applied to media coverage of the genocide in general, she adds. “The media continue to repeat Israel’s lies as if nothing had happened, after they have been debunked time and time again. They parrot the lies spewed by Israeli officials, repeating them like stock phrases in their articles.”

A method that transforms journalism into propaganda, Dima emphasizes. “Every time we say a certain word, we add a little phrase to define our position regarding that word, that person, that organization, that place.........

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