Most people don’t read past the headlines of news articles, either because they don’t have time or because the article itself is paywalled (for example, in Australia, News Corp and Nine websites).

Hence, Dr Assal Rad focuses on headline analyses to demonstrate the shocking media framing of Palestine and Iran stories.

The ABC has helpfully indexed all its articles by headline in an Algolia-powered database back to 2003. This allows for longitudinal analysis: we can easily analyse the ABC’s coverage of Israel/Palestine with its coverage of Russia/Ukraine and Iran.

As context, the difference in tone in the tweets of Australian politicians on these subjects could not be starker. Tweets perform a similar task to headlines.

Russia is bombing women and children. This isn’t a “complex” situation or a “special military operation”. It is an illegal and immoral war waged against innocent people - all countries should condemn President Putin’s actions and support Ukraine’s sovereignty. (Penny Wong, March 2022)

Australia unreservedly condemns Russia’s aerial attacks against multiple cities in Ukraine, including Kyiv. We stand with Ukraine and continue to call on Russia to end its illegal and immoral war. (Mark Dreyfus, December 2023)

Russia’s missile attacks on several Ukrainian cities, including a Kyiv children’s hospital are abhorrent. We condemn the targeting of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals. Australia continues to support the people of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s illegal, immoral war. (Penny Wong, August 2024)

 The statements routinely contain the strongest emotive and legal terms: “illegal”, “immoral”, “innocent”, “abhorrent”, “bombing women and children”, “all countries should condemn”, “unreservedly”, and “unequivocally”.

But leaders never use such language to describe Israel, despite the much greater magnitude........

© Pearls and Irritations