Western media outlets have come under criticism for serving as silent accomplices to genocide, due to their use of language that legitimizes Israel—currently facing international trial for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes—and its leaders, while remaining largely silent on crimes committed against Palestinians and adopting a markedly biased tone.
These media organizations are accused of employing a double standard: using language that obscures responsibility when reporting on Israel’s attacks against Palestinians, while actively spreading Israeli disinformation and propaganda that conceals, and at times even justifies, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
While employing active and emotionally charged phrases such as “massacred,” “killed,” and “slaughtered” for Israeli victims, the same outlets adopt passive, responsibility-deflecting language like “lost their lives,” “died,” or “were killed” when covering Israeli assaults that have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Media scholars argue that this pro-Israel editorial stance violates fundamental principles of journalistic impartiality and obstructs the public’s access to the truth. Research also shows that this sanitizing tone toward Israel is not incidental but a deliberate editorial choice.
Many of Europe’s leading media outlets exhibit a distinctly proIsrael bias in their coverage.
On February 29, 2024, more than 100 civilians were killed when Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians gathered around aid trucks in northern Gaza. Despite Israeli security sources openly admitting that soldiers had fired into the crowd, The Economist reported the incident with the headline: “A new tragedy shows anarchy rules in Gaza.”
In its subheading, the magazine wrote, “A shooting and stampede kill 112 and injure hundreds,” thus concealing the identity of the perpetrators. Moreover, by attributing the death toll to “the Hamasrun health ministry,” The Economist implicitly cast doubt on the credibility of the figures. Moreover, although Israeli official sources confirmed that the attack was carried out by Israeli soldiers, The Economist described the event with the phrase “when catastrophe befell an aid convoy,” framing the massacre as if it were an accidental misfortune that occurred on its own.
Despite Israel’s official statement confirming that the attack was carried out by its soldiers and that live fire was used, The Economist created the impression of ambiguity regarding responsibility, stating: “As with many events in the war between Israel and Hamas, the facts are destined to remain fiercely contested.”
In the caption used by The Guardian for this report, the sentence “People mourn over the body of a Palestinian killed in an early-morning incident on 29 February” opts for the word “incident” instead of “attack,” and “killed” instead of “slain” or “murdered.” Through this careful wording, the fact that the assault was carried out by Israeli soldiers is obscured by linguistic ambiguity.
Genocide call from WSJ
On October 11, 2023, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed on its website titled “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas.” Authored by Walter E. Block and Alan G. Futerman, the article states that “Israel is entitled to do whatever it takes to uproot this evil, depraved culture that resides next to it,” amounting to what can be described as an open call for genocide against Palestinians.
In its report dated February 29, 2024, the BBC used language that casts doubt on the number of Palestinians killed by framing the headline as: “More than 30,000 killed in Gaza, Hamas-run health ministry says.” The phrase “Hamas-run” implicitly questions the credibility of the reported death toll.
In CNN’s coverage of the same incident, once again, the fact that the victims were Palestinian and that Israel was the perpetrator is obscured.
In both its headlines and subheadings, The New York Times consistently adopts language that softens Israel’s systematic human rights violations. The newspaper refers to the demolition of Palestinian homes and the seizure of their properties using the term “eviction.” The description of certain areas as “contested neighborhoods” erases the existence of Palestinian-owned properties. By framing Israel’s systematic violations as mere property disputes rather than humanitarian crises, the newspaper obscures the reality of forced displacement and the ICJ’s recognition of East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory.
According to the BBC, Palestinians “die” while Israelis are “killed”
In a post dated October 9, 2023, the British broadcaster used language that obscures responsibility in its opening sentence by stating that 500 people “died” in Gaza—without naming the perpetrator—while in the second sentence, it reported that 700 Israelis were “killed,” clearly indicating an agent.
On November 21, 2024—the day the ICC arrest warrants were approved—the Wall Street Journal published a piece titled “The ICC’s Assault on Israel—and the U.S.” The article frames the ICC as siding with those “at war with Israel,” warning that the court has “sacrificed its future.”
With the opinion piece titled “If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can’t Gazans?”, the Wall Street Journal attempts to normalize the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in Gaza—policies promoted by the Trump administration—by employing rhetoric that disregards human rights violations and builds an ideological foundation for a crime clearly prohibited under international law. Trump’s calls for the forced removal of Gazans are presented by the WSJ through euphemisms such as “relocation” and “population transfer,” thereby legitimizing ethnic cleansing with distorted historical comparisons.
Western media often opts for vague terms like “bombardment” or “airstrike” when reporting on attacks against Gaza, deliberately obscuring the identity of the perpetrators. For instance, the BBC uses the phrase “were killed” when referring to Israeli casualties— highlighting the presence of an agent—while employing “have died” for Palestinian victims, thus concealing responsibility. This editorial policy is quite telling, as it reveals how the language used to report on the conflict reflects political bias rather than neutrality.
In its article dated October 15, 2023, titled “Are war crimes being committed in the Israel-Hamas conflict?” and authored by Clare Roth, Germany’s state broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) presents the question of whether Israeli attacks constitute war crimes as a matter of debate. The article includes statements such as, “Some argue that given the brutality of Hamas’s attacks, the actions of the Israeli military are justified,” thereby conveying to readers the notion that Israel’s indiscriminate assaults might not qualify as war crimes.
Opposition to campus protests framed as domestic security issue
In its February 5, 2024 article titled “Campus Protests Give Russia, China and Iran Fuel to Exploit U.S. Divide”, the New York Times portrays pro-Palestinian demonstrations as a domestic threat, directly framing them as movements being exploited by foreign powers.
In its coverage of campus protests, the Associated Press consistently opts for generalized terms such as “pro-Palestinian demonstrators” and police arresting a certain number of “people” rather than specifying institutional identities like students, faculty members, or university officials. This linguistic choice obscures the fact that the protests are legitimate actions by members of the academic community, instead creating the impression that the demonstrations are the result of outside interference. Such framing contributes to the marginalization of these protests by severing them from the context of demanding academic freedom.
Fox Business’ article dated May 2, 2024, supports the claim that foreign powers are behind the protests, with the headline: “China, TikTok role in anti-Israel college protests is ‘an act of war’ expert says.”
The report alleges that China is using TikTok’s algorithm to incite the protests and claims that China and TikTok’s alleged involvement in anti-Israel university protests constitutes “an act of war.”
In its April 22, 2024, article titled “Who’s Behind the Anti-Israel Protests,” The Wall Street Journal features the views of Executive Director Steven Stalinsky, who claims that “Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others are grooming activists in the U.S. and across the West.” The piece frames campus protests as a domestic security threat, alleging that demonstrators sometimes resorted to violence, chanted slogans in support of “terrorist organizations,” and burned the American flag while waving Hezbollah’s. Statements in the article such as “major terrorist organizations are backing the protests” and that this is “part of Hamas’s plan to win the hearts and minds of the West” reveal a securitizing narrative that strips the protests of their academic and free speech context.
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s statements on CNN— where she employed language critical of campus protests and endorsed the notion that some demonstrators are “connected to Russia”—demonstrate that the “security” rhetoric framing these protests as unlawful or dangerous is now being echoed by high-level political figures in the West. This aligns with the broader narrative in Western media that casts campus demonstrations in the context of threat and subversion.
Several BBC journalists faced disciplinary actions for proPalestinian social media activity. In October 2023, six reporters from BBC News Arabic were taken off air for liking or posting pro-Palestine content, actions deemed violations of the BBC’s impartiality guidelines. Former BBC newsreader Joe Brolly stated on social media, “I’m a former BBC newsreader - Gaza is the reason I resigned.” Additionally, over 500 media figures, including Gary Lineker and Miriam Margolyes, signed an open letter criticizing the BBC’s coverage of Gaza and the West Bank, condemning the removal of a documentary from iPlayer as “politically motivated censorship.”
In the U.S., the investigative journalism organization The Intercept revealed that the New York Times issued an internal set of directives restricting the use of terms such as “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “occupied territories” in reporting on Israel’s attacks on Gaza. The directives also said that the word “Palestine” should be used only in “very rare cases.”
