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No one likes to think they’re being hysterical. And nothing makes hysterical people angrier than being described as such. So, let me offer my apologies in advance for what follows.

Jeremy Musighi, an independent researcher, recently released a study analyzing 14.7 million news articles published across 65 languages over the last decade. He found that, in 2024, news outlets published “more than twice as many stories about Israel as about all 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined.”

Given that many countries focus on Israel to distract from their own problems, that’s not that shocking. But Musighi also found that, “On American cable news, Israel was the most-mentioned country — ahead of Iran, Russia, Ukraine, China. On the BBC’s news channel, 1 in every 17 broadcast minutes mentioned Israel.”

One might argue that given Israel’s recent actions, it earned such coverage. But Israel gets wildly disproportionate coverage in peacetime too. In 2019, long before the war in Gaza, “1 of every 112 news articles on Earth — from all the world’s outlets minus Israel’s — was primarily about Israel. 1.8 million international articles mentioned it.”

Now, I have reservations about Musighi’s methodology, given how media outlets recycle and syndicate content. But rather than wade into the statistics, for argument’s sake let’s just cut all of his findings in half. That would still be hard to defend rationally.

Also, this says nothing of the quality of the reporting. If it was objective, the quantity wouldn’t matter much. But a sizable portion is objectively anti-Israel, often taking Hamas’ claims at face value. When Hamas shrieked that Gaza was on the brink of famine, the Western press breathlessly repeated the claim, which was utterly false.

In a recent interview on Taqarrab, an Arab-language podcast, acclaimed photo “journalist” Motaz Azaiza admitted that he refused to publish images of Hamas abuses — to protect the abusers. The New York Times’ Nick Kristoff launched weeks of coverage with the claim that Israelis train dogs to rape Palestinians. American media covered the controversy over Macklemore’s criticisms of Israel like a free speech martyr.

In fairness, a lot of coverage is driven by news, like when the United Nations condemns Israel, which it........

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