What went wrong with the British media coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza?
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Parliament Square in London on 21 February 2024
Zahera Harb writes in Al Jazeera on 6 March 2024:
Over the past five months, a lot has been said and written on the British media’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. Experts, journalists and activists, including myself, have argued in numerous articles and interviews that the British media exhibits certain biases in its coverage of this war, and the broader issue of Israel-Palestine.
In a new report, based on the largest statistical analysis of the media coverage of the atrocities committed in Israel on October 7, and Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people in the first month of the war, the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre of Media Monitoring (CfMM) laid out the empirical evidence for these observations and concerns.
Looking at some 180,000 video clips from seven United Kingdom broadcasters and three international broadcasters, as well as about 26,000 news articles from 28 British media websites, CfMM has assessed whether the UK media have reliably informed the public on the conflict and shared the positions of all concerned parties responsibly.
In line with the findings of smaller-scale studies conducted thus far, it found that Israeli narratives, voices and grievances were favoured over Palestinian voices, narratives and grievances in the coverage. “Israel’s rights” were insistently emphasised, often resulting in the exclusion and erasure of the rights of the Palestinians. Emotive language was consistently used for Israeli victims of violence, but not as much for the Palestinians. Representatives and supporters of Israel were allowed to dehumanise Palestinians on air, with no considerable pushback from news presenters and talk show hosts.
Analysing the coverage under six themes – contextualisation, language, framing, claims, the undermining of Palestinian sources and the misrepresentation of pro-Palestinian protesters – the research found that many news outlets have opted to present news from an Israeli perspective, often with significant lapses in basic fact-checking and verification.