Western legacy media is failing to tell the truth on the US-Israeli war on Iran, says a leading US academic and analyst.

“Mass murder has been normalised,” said Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs in an interview with the Chinese channel CGTN Live.

He argues that mainstream media in the US and Europe is not reporting the truth about what is really happening in the Middle East.

• READ MORE: Iran confirms security boss Larijani, Basij chief killed; 2 dead in Israel
• As Israel keeps bombing Iran, Palestinians face growing violence in West Bank
• Trump scolds allies over Strait of Hormuz operation; UAE closes airspace
• Chris Hedges: The world according to Gaza – it’s only the start
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Professor Sachs describes how he attended a UN Security Council meeting on the day that the US-Israeli bombing started.

“And what did all the Western countries do? They attacked Iran for being bombed.

“You know this is propaganda. This is so-called narrative control.

“So yes, mass murder has been normalised.”

Jeffrey Sachs: Western media is failing to tell the truth            Video: CGYN America

I came across this statement from an independent media source this week:

“The mainstream media is doing what it always does in wartime: manufacturing consent, sanitising atrocities and platforming war criminals.”

It came to mind immediately when I read The Times newspaper obituary for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which was reprinted in the Christchurch Press at the weekend.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was murdered by the US-Israel in the initial strikes of their illegal bombing and killing campaign in Iran — an assault that rips up international law and trashes the United Nations Charter.

• READ MORE: Oil tankers hit in Iraq, Tehran sets 3 conditions for peace
• Why Trump is in so much danger with his illegal Iran war
• Ramzy Baroud: Israel’s greatest weapon was fear – and it’s now failing
• An anti-war meeting in Auckland that was protested against by pro-Israel/pro-American Iranians
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports
• Other images and video fromthe Stop Wars meeting

The obituary was a straight piece of Western propaganda which did nothing to hide its blatant disinformation (deliberate misinformation). It may as well have come straight from an Israeli propaganda unit — it may well have for all I know — with its demonisation of the Iranian leadership.

The Times claimed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had “…approved the development of a clandestine nuclear weapons programme that could, if ever completed, threaten Israel’s very existence, destabilise the Middle East and imperil global oil supplies”.

This is an obvious lie. Israel’s Prime Minister — and well-known war criminal — Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying for 30 years that Iran is just a few weeks or months away from producing a nuclear weapon.

The fact is that all credible analysts, including inside US intelligence, agree Iran never decided to pursue nuclear weapons and the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has never detected such a programme. In fact, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared nuclear weapons to be “religiously forbidden under Islamic law”.

The rest of the obituary is riddled with similar untruths and distortions in a ham-fisted justification of US/Israel’s assault on Iran. If The Times has set out to undermine confidence in Western media reporting on West Asia (Middle East) this would be an excellent example.

Platforming war criminals
How much Western media time and space has been given to Trump and Netanyahu in the past 11 days to spread lies and disinformation direct to Western audiences? And how much time has been given to the Iranian leadership, UN officials or international experts to debunk the US/Israeli justifications for war?

Meanwhile, the media have platformed Iranian New Zealanders, who oppose the Iranian leadership and support the appointment of the former Shah’s son Reza Pahlavi, to lead the country.

The previous Shah’s rule was a brutal dictatorship where tens of thousands were murdered or imprisoned by the Shah’s secret police, the Savak. The Shah’s dictatorship was backed by the US and Western interests till its overthrow in 1979.

The new proposed Shah is no different from his father, posing with Netanyahu and celebrating the bombing and killing in Iran.

So why has our mainstream media given so much attention to Iranians here who celebrate death and destruction in Iran alongside people waving the Israeli flag — a symbol of genocide and apartheid — and inviting Destiny Church to join them. A real horror show!

And when it comes to women’s rights, why is the Western media so happy to denounce restrictions on clothing for women in Iran but ignore Israel’s denial of rights to Palestinian women in Gaza whom Amnesty International this week says face the erosion of health and safety in Gaza in a “deliberate act of war targeting women and girls”.

Sanitising atrocities
And why has the Western media all but ignored the US/Israeli missile attack on the girls school in Iran killing at least 165 children? Imagine if this were an attack on a school in Israel or the US? Imagine the apoplectic outrage. Imagine the rush to sanctions and war?

This attack and murder of Iranian girls is sidelined for the same reason Israel’s genocide in Gaza killing tens of thousands of women and children is being downplayed.

Sanitising atrocities by the US or Israel and finding excuses, justifications or explanations for them is in the Western media’s DNA.

The Press and Western media take all their stories from Western sources such as Reuters and Associated Press news agencies and Western newspapers such as The Times and Daily Telegraph. They would never dream of including stories from Al Jazeera or any Palestinian news sources.

I would once have lamented the loss of mainstream media reporting on issues but it’s no longer possible to pretend it is in any way a force for good.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

Right now, the United States and Israel are continuing their bombardment of Iran.

As the confirmed death toll climbs past 1330 and hospitals, schools, and residential neighborhoods are hit daily, the media apparatus that sold you the Iraq war and denied Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians for the last two years is now running the same playbook.

The Atlantic is laundering Netanyahu’s reputation as a “conflict-averse” leader while he tells the world this war lets him do what he’s “yearned for” for 40 years.

• READ MORE: Iran says US, Israel have hit nearly 10,000 civilian sites since war began
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

Bari Weiss is tweeting fire emojis at pro-war clips, falsely suggesting Iran has nuclear weapons, and devoting journalistic resources to tracking the Instagram likes of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife.

CNN is giving unchallenged airtime to International Criminal Court (ICC)-indicted Israeli officials claiming American soldiers have an “obligation” to die for Israel.

And that’s before the cable news network is taken over by Paramount, the Weiss operation run by the nepo-son of Larry Ellison, the single largest donor to Friends of the IDF.

The BBC, meanwhile, leads with nine dead in Israel while relegating some 180 children killed by the US in a girls’ school in Minab to a footnote.

This is what the legacy media machine looks like in wartime. It has always looked like this.

And it is exactly why we launched Drop Site less than two years ago.

On the ground reporting
While Weiss and CBS were manufacturing consent for this war, Drop Site has had reporters on the ground reporting the facts.

In just the last week:

• Reza Sayah reported from Tehran on a double-tap bombing that killed over 20 people at a popular square during Ramadan, connecting the tactic to US strikes in Afghanistan, and Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza.
• Drop Site correspondent reported from Minab, where a missile struck a girls’ elementary school and killed 180 children, and from Lamerd, where a sports hall full of teenage girls was bombed during practice.
• We were among the first outlets on the ground verifying the strike in Minab as US and Israeli propagandists sought to deny and deflect.
• We have consistently obtained exclusive information from senior Iranian officials who have contradicted claims by Trump, claims that have just as consistently fallen apart under scrutiny.
• We exposed the fabricated CIA narrative about “tracking Khamenei for months” to his “secret location” — his secret location was his office, and he had refused to relocate.

Republished from Drop Site News. Subscribe to this independent news service.

In an era when images can circle the globe in seconds and newsrooms claim to uphold universal humanitarian principles; one might expect the killing of 165 schoolgirls inside a primary school to dominate international headlines.

One would expect emergency debates, moral outrage, and relentless coverage.

Yet in the southeastern Iranian city of Minab — where Israeli-American strikes obliterated classrooms filled with children — the world’s most influential media institutions have responded with something far more revealing than condemnation: they have responded with silence.

• READ MORE: China’s Wang Yi says Iran war should never have happened — calls for immediate  ceasefire
• Suffering in Gaza and occupied West Bank remains acute as the world focuses on the US-Israeli war on Iran
• This illegal US-Israeli attack on Iran is also an assault on the United Nations
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

These were not combatants. They were not militants. They were children seated at their desks, pens in their hands, notebooks open before them, studying, whispering to classmates, and imagining futures that stretched decades ahead.

In seconds, that ordinary school day turned into a massacre. Desks became splintered wreckage, classrooms collapsed into dust, and rows of coffins replaced rows of pupils.

Yet the names of these girls — 165 lives extinguished before they truly began — barely entered the global conversation.

This omission is not the product of oversight. It reflects something far more structural: the hierarchy of victims that governs much of the contemporary information order.

In theory, modern Western media institutions present themselves as defenders of human rights and guardians of moral accountability. In practice, their editorial priorities often mirror geopolitical interests with striking precision.

Human rights losing integrity
When the deaths of children generate outrage in one context but indifference in another, the moral language surrounding human rights begins to lose its integrity.

When tragedies reinforce established narratives about adversarial states, they are amplified, dramatised, and transformed into global moral spectacles.

But when tragedies expose the human cost of the military actions carried out by Western powers or their closest allies, they are quietly displaced from the front page —if they appear at all.

The massacre in Minab illustrates this logic with devastating clarity.

The deaths of 165 Iranian schoolgirls do not fit comfortably within the dominant geopolitical storyline that portrays Israel and its strategic partners as defenders of stability and order in a turbulent region.

Acknowledging such an atrocity would inevitably raise difficult questions: about the legality of strikes on civilian infrastructure, about the ethics of military escalation, and about the widening humanitarian toll of ongoing Israeli-American attacks across the region.

It is therefore far easier to look away.

Minab not isolated tragedy
But Minab is not an isolated tragedy. Across Lebanon, relentless bombardments have repeatedly struck civilian neighbourhoods, reducing homes and streets to rubble.

Across Palestine, entire communities have endured cycles of destruction that claim the lives of children whose only battlefield was the ground beneath their feet. Hospitals, schools, and residential blocks have all entered the expanding geography of devastation.

These events do not occur in a vacuum. They form part of a broader pattern in which military power operates alongside narrative power. Missiles shape the physical battlefield, while selective reporting shapes the battlefield of perception.

What emerges is not merely a media bias but a form of narrative engineering. Certain victims are elevated as symbols of universal suffering, while others — often far more numerous — are rendered invisible. Compassion itself becomes curated, distributed unevenly according to political convenience.

For Western audiences accustomed to believing in the neutrality of their information systems, this selective visibility should provoke serious reflection. The credibility of humanitarian discourse depends on consistency.

The girls of Minab deserved the same recognition afforded to any victims of violence anywhere in the world. They deserved to have their stories told, their lives acknowledged, and their deaths confronted with the seriousness such an atrocity demands.

Instead, they encountered a second form of erasure.

First came the missiles that ended their lives. Then came the silence that followed.

Selective visibility needs reflection
For Western audiences accustomed to believing in the neutrality of their information systems, this selective visibility should provoke serious reflection.

In the contemporary information age, propaganda rarely announces itself openly. It often operates through absence — through the stories that never reach the front page, the victims whose names remain unspoken, and the tragedies that disappear before the world has time to notice.

The massacre in Minab therefore stands as more than a local catastrophe. It exposes a deeper crisis in the global information order — one in which the value of human life appears disturbingly contingent on political context.

And if the deaths of 165 schoolgirls in their classrooms fail to trigger universal outrage, the question is no longer about geopolitics alone.

It becomes a question about the credibility of the moral system that claims to defend humanity itself.

Dr Hana Saada is an Algerian university lecturer and journalist, and editor-in-chief of the English edition of Dzair Tube. She holds a PhD in media translation and writes on geopolitics, media narratives, and international affairs. This article is republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons.

When I heard the terrible news that the Americans and Israelis had killed more than 165 children this week in an elementary school in Minab in Southern Iran it took me back to a wonderful day I spent in Isfahan in 2018.

I met lots of Iranian school children and their teachers that day. They were keen to practise their English and ask lots of questions. I want to share that day with you because it was filled with hope, with promise for a better world.

My wife and I were visiting Iran, both for the second time.

• READ MORE:  Death toll in Israeli strike on southern Iran school rises to 165
• After a sports hall in Iran was bombed, witnesses describe chaos and ‘continuous screaming’
• Luxon defends NZ’s position on Iran attacks – same as Australia
• Neither preemptive nor legal, US-Israeli strikes on Iran have blown up international law
• UN’s Guterres condemns US-Israeli strikes, retaliatory attacks by Iran
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

Right at the end of our time there we spent a day in Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan. It is a massive square that could enclose a dozen football fields.

Built by Shah Abbas I in the 17th Century, during the Safavid period, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site with markets, palaces and other cultural sites framing its four sides.  At one end is the magnificent Imam Mosque where a string of memorable moments happened to me.

I even saw a most astonishing one-woman demonstration.

We were just approaching the Imam Mosque when I noticed a young woman removing her head scarf. A mass of black hair fell down to her waist and then she began dancing.

‘Is this a protest?’
Rhythmically she swirled her upper body in a circular motion that sent her hair out horizontally around her. I was gob-smacked.

After a minute or two she stopped and started talking to her male companion who had been photographing her. I approached.

“Is this a protest?” I asked, somewhat gormlessly.  Yes, against the clothing restrictions.

Today the courage and determination of such people has, to a degree, paid off. Those restrictions, particularly in the cities, have effectively been lightened.  I have seen lots of footage of Iranian women without any head covering.

I salute their courage and determination and know their struggle will continue.

I also salute the courage and determination of the millions of Iranians who have turned out this week to support their government against the violent assault on the sovereignty of Iran by the racist, fascist genocidal Israeli state and its powerful vassal the USA.

Following the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, I saw remarkable footage of that same vast square in Isfahan filled to the four corners with what must have been hundreds of thousands of people. As with millions around the country, they were defying the missiles to protest the violation of their sovereignty.

The inconvenient truth
The scale of the pro-government demonstrations is virtually never shown in the Western media but to understand the contested political landscape that is Iran you need to understand that inconvenient truth.

Iranian politics in the Western view has been reduced to a cartoon, to a Manichean world of black and white — which partly explains why Westerners, most particularly the leaders, fail to grasp the fierce nationalism that has seen millions of Iranians rally round their government as their state comes under an existential threat.

That day in 2018 in that square I chatted with pro-government and anti-government people; all incredibly nice and open and welcoming. Everyone was keen to discuss Iran and the wider world.

There were lots of school parties and both the teachers and their students were keen to speak with us. It was an unalloyed pleasure for us. Iranians are remarkably hospitable, cultured and kind. For me, they are the finest people in the Middle East.

That is partly why I felt sad and bitter when I watched the footage of the bombed-out Shajareh Tayyebeh girls elementary school (6-12 year-olds) in Minab and heard the screams of mothers calling for children whom they will never walk to school again.

The Western empire has a long history of killing children. I recently referenced Madeleine Albright’s infamous comment on the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children being “a price worth paying”.

This is just standard modus operandi for the West.

Protected by Mossad
Israeli football hooligans travel through Europe chanting “Why is school out in Gaza? Because there are no kids left!” They are protected by Mossad, local police and politicians like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Australian PM Anthony Albanese recently welcomed Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, who in October 2023 said: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”

This is as clear a statement of genocidal intent as you could get and Israel made good on it.

Israel, the killer of tens of thousands of school kids, presents itself as a liberator for Iran? You don’t have to be an A-grade student to spot that lie.

Many people around the Western world want to commit the children of Iran into the hands of the President of the United States.

According to US Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA), Vice-Chair of the House Democratic Caucus: “In the Epstein files, there’s highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children.”

Lieu, one of the architects of the Epstein Files Transparency Act is also one of those legislators who has had access to some of the files still kept out of the public record.

Iranian children have as much right to grow up in safety as our own children.

infamous bro-talk
We should all also recall Trump’s infamous bro-talk with the vile radio host Howard Stern. Stern asked if he could refer to Ivanka Trump as a “piece of ass,” and Donald Trump salivated back at him: “Yeah.”

While they were joking about this “piece of ass”, Trump said he would try to date Ivanka if she wasn’t his daughter. It is a relevant anecdote because we live in the age of American Geopolitical Epsteinism — a world of predators seeking to violate those weaker than them.

You don’t have to like the Iranian government to support the UN Charter and the insistence on the sovereign equality of nations.

Nothing in the Charter says it is okay for powerful white countries to attack other countries.  The West needs to bring its leaders to justice for the crime of genocide not launch yet another war on innocents.

Hands off Iran, Netanyahu. Hands off the children of Iran, Trump.

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser based in Wellington, publisher of Solidarity and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam war. This article was first published by Solidarity on 2 March 2026.

Pulitzer Prize–winning US journalist Chris Hedges joins Antoinette Lattouf on We Used To Be Journos to unpack his time in Australia, including some fraught interactions with sections of the Australian media.

The pair also discuss what he flew all this way to talk about — “how Western journalists are betraying their colleagues in Gaza”.

Hedges also offers some honest advice for young people who still want to tell stories and speak truth to power.

• READ AND WATCH MORE: Australia’s National Press Club blocks Hedges’ Gaza media talk, lines up former Israeli officer
• Chris Hedges: Remove curse of Gaza genocide before it becomes the norm
• The Chris Hedges Report

The We Used To Be Journos interview.                     Video: ETTE Media

COMMENTARY: By Walden Bello

When the Flores and Velasco articles and posts whitewashing Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza first came out a few days ago, I was waiting for people in the Philippine media to criticise and denounce them since they were so obviously hack pieces that did not meet the minimal standards of decent journalism.

I waited and waited, until I realised that there were no media people or organisations that were going to speak up.

Where were the progressive and liberal voices, apart from those of Richard Heydarian and Inday Espina Varona?

• READ MORE: The betrayal of Palestinian journalists
• Which Australian journalists and politicians have gone on trips to Israel and Palestine?
• Other reports on the Israeli war on Gaza media bias

This was the reason I felt compelled to issue the statement condemning the sordid reporting of Flores (The Philippine Star) and Velasco (Daily Tribune).

I was not out to do an expose, but that’s what it effectively became. In my subsequent posts, I raised the question of what was the reason just two journalists were willing to challenge the stories.

Was it a case of circling the wagons to protect errant colleagues? Was it fear of ties with the Israeli state being exposed by the Israelis in retaliation? Was it fear of physical or political reprisals by the Israelis?

These may have played a part, but the deafening silence meant there was something bigger at work.

This morning I received a long text from a prominent media practitioner that provided the answer. It’s not fear. It’s actually worse: agreement with Zionist ideology and policies, including genocide.

That the person asked me not to divulge his name for fear of suffering retribution from his colleagues stunned me. OMG, is this how deep the rot is with our media? ? Here is his disconcerting revelation to me:

‘Most are prejudiced’
“Yes some are scared, but honestly most of them actually are prejudiced against Muslims and side with the Zionists anytime.

“Most believe in the US religious fascist Zionist narrative, and also cannot accept that the world has changed — that the US is no longer the unipower it was decades ago, and that Russia, China, India and BRICS are on the rise.

“And also, you should hear them talk about how Filipino Muslims should be wiped off the face of the earth.

“These are college graduates from UP [University of the Philippines], UST [University of Santo Tomas], Ateneo who studied media.

“Whenever I would voice empathy for the Muslim minority here, or Palestinians, I’d be called stupid. Same also because I refused to join in the corruption.

“Oh, and also they have the same prejudice against China and the Chinese and mistake the Japanese imperial army atrocities as something China did to us!

“Also this is not limited to media. I have batchmates from UP Diliman, medical doctors, lawyers, engineers who also have the same prejudices.”

He added: “Some of these journalists have won awards abroad.”

Walden Bello is a Filipino academic and analyst of Global South issues who was awarded Amnesty International Philippines’ Most Distinguished Defender of Human Rights Award in 2023. He has also served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.

Canadian photojournalist Valerie Zink has resigned after eight years with Reuters, criticising the news agency’s stance on Gaza as a “betrayal of journalists” and accusing it of “justifying and enabling” the killing of 245 journalists in the Palestinian enclave.

“At this point it’s become impossible for me to maintain a relationship with Reuters given its role in justifying and enabling the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza,” Zink said today via the US social media company X.

Zink said she worked as a Reuters stringer for eight years, with her photos published by many outlets, including The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and others worldwide.

• READ MORE: I can’t in good conscience continue to work for Reuters given their betrayal of journalists in Gaza
• Valerie Zink: Why I resigned from Reuters — Against The Current
• Other reports on the media and Gaza

She criticised Reuters’ reporting after the killing of Anas al-Sharif and an Al Jazeera crew in Gaza on August 10, accusing the agency of amplifying Israel’s “entirely baseless claim” that al-Sharif was a Hamas operative, which was “one of countless lies that media outlets like Reuters have dutifully repeated and dignified,” she said.

“I have valued the work that I brought to Reuters over the past eight years, but at this point I can’t conceive of wearing this press pass with anything but deep shame and grief,” Zink said.

Zink also emphasised that the agency’s willingness to “perpetuate Israel’s propaganda” had not spared their own reporters from Israel’s genocide.

“I don’t know what it means to begin to honour the courage and sacrifice of journalists in Gaza, the bravest and best to ever live, but going forward I will direct whatever contributions I have to offer with that front of mind,” Zink highlighted, reflecting on the courage of Gaza’s journalists.

“I owe my colleagues in Palestine at least this much, and so much more,” she added.

I can’t in good conscience continue to work for Reuters given their betrayal of journalists in Gaza and culpability in the assassination of 245 our colleagues. pic.twitter.com/WO6tjHqDIU

— Valerie Zink (@valeriezink) August 26, 2025

‘Double tap’ strike
Referring to the killing of six more journalists, including Reuters cameraman Hossam Al-Masri, in Israel’s Monday attack on the al-Nasser hospital in Gaza, Zink said: “It was what’s known as a ‘double tap’ strike, in which Israel bombs a civilian target like a school or hospital; waits for medics, rescue teams, and journalists to arrive; and then strikes again.”

Zink underlined that Western media was directly culpable for creating the conditions for these events, quoting Jeremy Scahill of Drop Down News, who said major outlets — from The New York Times to Reuters — had served as “a conveyor belt for Israeli propaganda,” sanitising war crimes, dehumanising victims, and abandoning both their colleagues and their commitment to true and ethical reporting.

She said Western media outlets, by “repeating Israel’s genocidal fabrications without determining if they have any credibility” and abandoning basic journalistic responsibility, have enabled the killing of more journalists in Gaza in two years than in major global conflicts combined, while also contributing to the suffering of the population.

The new fatalities among the media personnel in Gaza brought the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023 to 246.

Israel has killed more than 62,700 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.

Last November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.

Republished from Anadolu Ajansi.

Three media commentators addressed the 98th week of New Zealand solidarity rallies for Palestine in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland today, criticising the quality of news reporting about the world’s biggest genocide crisis this century.

Speakers at other locations around the country also condemned what they said was biased media coverage.

The critics said they were affirming their humanity in solidarity with the people of Palestine as the United Nations this week officially declared a man-made famine in Gaza because of Israel’s weaponisation of starvation against the besieged enclave with 2 million population.

• READ MORE: Facing up to genocide — a New Zealand journalist bears witness with Gaza and West Bank
• NZ joins calls for urgent, independent foreign media access to Gaza
• Gaza’s ‘nutrition clinics packed amid worsening hunger crisis’
• Other killing of Gaza journalists reports

More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 22 months of conflict – mostly women and children.

One of the major criticisms at the Palestine Solidarity Network (PSNA) organised rally was that the New Zealand media has consistently framed the series of massacres as a “war” between Israel and Hamas instead of a military land grab based on ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The first speaker, Mick Hall, a former news agency journalist who is currently an independent political columnist, said the way news media had covered these crimes had “undoubtedly affected public opinion”.

“As Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza devolved into a full-blown genocide, our media continued to frame Israel’s attack on Gaza as a war against Hamas, while they uncritically recorded Western leaders’ claims that Israel was exercising a ‘right of self-defence’,” he said.

NZ media lacking context
New Zealand news outlets continued to “present an ahistorical account of what has transpired since October 7, shorn of context, ignoring Israel’s history of occupation, of colonial violence against the Palestinian people”.

“An implicit understanding that violence and ethnic cleansing forms part of the organisational DNA of Zionism should have shaped how news stories were framed and presented over the past 22 months.

“Instead, newsroom leaders took their lead from our politicians, from the foreign policy positions from those in Washington and other aligned centres of power.”

Hall said newsrooms had not taken a “neutral position” — “nor are they attempting to keep us informed in any meaningful sense”.

“They failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.

“By wilfully declining to adjudicate between contested claims of Israel and its victims, they failed to meet the informational needs of democratic citizenship in a most profound way.

“They lowered the standard of news, instead of upholding it, as they so sanctimoniously tell us.”

Evans slams media ‘apologists’
Award-winning New Zealand cartoonist Malcolm Evans congratulated the crowd of about 300 protesters for “being on the right side of history”.

“As we remember more than 240 journalists, camera and media people, murdered, assassinated, by Zionist Israel — who they were and the principles they stood for we should not forget our own media,” he said.

“The media which, contrary to the principles they claim to stand for, tried to tell us Zionist Israeli genocide was justified.”

“Whatever your understanding of the conflict in Palestine, which has brought you here today and for these past many months, it won’t have come first from the mainstream media.

“It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.

“The reporters whose witness to Zionist Israel’s war crimes sparked your outrage were not from the ranks of Western media apologists.”

Describing the mainstream media as “pimps for propaganda”, Evans said that in any “decent world” he would not be standing there — instead the New Zealand journalists organisation would be, “expressing solidarity with their murdered Middle Eastern colleagues”.

Palestinian journalists owed debt
David Robie, author and editor of Asia Pacific Report, said the world owed a huge debt to the Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

“Although global media freedom groups have conflicting death toll numbers, it is generally accepted that more than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed — many of them deliberately targeted by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force], even killing their families as well.”

Dr Robie stressed that the Palestinian journalist death toll had eclipsed that of the combined media deaths of the American Civil War, First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cambodian War, Yugoslavia Wars, Afghan War, and the ongoing Ukraine War.

“The Palestinian death toll of journalists is greater than the combined death toll of all these other wars,” he said. “This is shocking and shameful.”

He pointed out that when Palestinian reporter Anas al-Sharif was assassinated on August 10, his entire television crew was also wiped out ahead of the Israeli invasion of Gaza City — “eliminating the witnesses, that’s what Israel does”.

Six journalists died that day in an air strike, four of them from Al Jazeera, which is banned in Israel.

Dr Robie also referred to “disturbing reports” about the existence of an IDF military unit — the so-called “legitimisation cell” — tasked with smearing and targeting journalists in Gaza with fake information.

He condemned the New Zealand media for republishing some of these “counter-narratives” without question.

“This is shameful because news editors know that they are dealing with an Israeli government with a history of lying and disinformation; a government that is on trial with the International Court of Justice for ‘plausible genocide’; and a prime minister wanted on an International Criminal Court arrest warrant to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said.

“Why would you treat this government as a credible source without scrutiny?”

Mock media cemetery
The protest included a mock pavement cemetery with about 20 “bodies” of murdered journalists and blue “press” protective vests, and placards declaring “Killing journalists is killing the truth”, “Genocide: Zionism’s final solution” and “Zionism shames Jewish tradition”.

The demonstrators marched around Te Komititanga Square, pausing at strategic moments as Palestinians read out the names of the hundreds of killed Gazan journalists to pay tribute to their courage and sacrifice.

Last year, the Gazan journalists were collectively awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize for their “courage and commitment to freedom of expression”.

In Ōtautahi Christchurch today, one of the speakers at the Palestine solidarity rally there was author and journalist Saige England, who called on journalists to “speak the truth on Gaza”.

“The truth of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon — slow starvation, mutilation by hunger,” she said.

“The truth is a statement by Israel that journalists are ‘the enemy’. Israel says journalists are the enemy, what does that tell you?

“Why? Because it has carried out invasions, apartheid and genocide for decades.”

Protesters in their thousands have been taking to the streets in Aotearoa New Zealand demonstrating in solidarity with Palestine and against genocide for the past 97 weeks.

Yet rarely have the protests across the motu made headlines — or even the news for that matter — unlike the larger demonstrations in many countries around the world.

At times the New Zealand news media themselves have been the target over what is often claimed to be “biased reportage lacking context”. Yet even protests against media, especially public broadcasters, on their doorstep have been ignored.

• READ MORE: UN declares Israeli-made famine in Gaza; 2 people starve to death in 24 hours
• New Zealand must move beyond empty statements on Gaza
• First-hand view of peacemaking challenge in the ‘Holy Land’
• New Zealand journalist documents Palestinian life under occupation
• Other Cole Martin reports

Reporters have not even engaged, let alone reported the protests.

Last weekend, this abruptly changed with two television crews on hand in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland days after six Palestinian journalists — four Al Jazeera correspondents and cameramen, including the celebrated Anas al-Sharif, plus two other reporters were assassinated by the Israeli military in targeted killings.

With the Gaza Media Office confirming a death toll of almost 270 journalists since October 2023 — more than the combined killings of journalists in both World Wars, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Afghan wars — a growing awareness of the war was hitting home.

After silence about the killing of journalists for the past 22 months, New Zealand this week signed a joint statement by 27 nations for the Media Freedom Coalition belatedly calling on Israel to open up access to foreign media and to offer protection for journalists in Gaza “in light of the unfolding catastrophe”.

Sydney Harbour Bridge factor
Another factor in renewed media interest has probably been the massive March for Humanity on Sydney Harbour Bridge with about 300,000 people taking part on August 3.

Most New Zealand media has had slanted coverage privileging the Tel Aviv narrative in spite of the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the country is on trial for “plausible genocide” in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Both UN courts are in The Hague.

One independent New Zealand journalist who has been based in the occupied West Bank for two periods during the Israeli war on Gaza – last year for two months and again this year – is unimpressed with the reportage.

Why? Video and photojournalist Cole Martin from Ōtautahi Christchurch believes there is a serious lack of understanding in New Zealand media of the context of the structural and institutional violence towards the Palestinians.

“It is a media scene in Aotearoa that repeats very harmful and inaccurate narratives,” Martin says.

“Also, there is this idea to be unbiased and neutral in a conflict, both perspectives must have equal legitimacy.”

As a 26-year-old photojournalist, Martin has packed in a lot of experience in his early career, having worked two years for World Vision, meeting South Sudanese refugees in Uganda who had fled civil war. He shared their stories in Aotearoa.

‘Struggle of the oppressed’
This taught him to put “the struggle of the oppressed and marginalised” at the heart of his storytelling.

Martin studied for a screen and television degree at NZ Broadcasting School, which led to employment with the news team at Whakaata Māori, then a video journalist role with the Otago Daily Times.

He first visited Palestine in early 2019, “seeing the occupation and injustice with my own eyes”. After the struggle re-entered the news cycle in October 2023, he recognised that as a journalist with first-hand contextual knowledge and connections on the ground he was in a unique position to ensure Palestinian voices were heard.

Martin spent two months in the West Bank last year and then gained a grant to study Arabic “which allowed me to return longer-term as New Zealand’s only journalist on the ground”.

“Yes, there are competing narratives,’ he admits, “but the reality on the ground is that if you engage with this in good faith and truth, one of those narratives has a lot more legitimacy than the other.”

Martin says that New Zealand media have failed to recognise this reality through a “mix of ignorance and bias”.

“They haven’t been fair and honest, but they think they have,” he says.

Hesitancy to engage
He argues that the hesitancy to engage with the Palestinian media, Palestinian journalists and Palestinian sources on the ground “springs from the idea that to be Palestinian you are inherently biased”.

“In the same way that being Māori means you are biased,” he says.

“Your world view shapes your experiences. If you are living under a system of occupation and domination, or seeing that first hand, it would be wrong and immoral to talk about it in a way that is misleading, the same way that I cannot water down what I am reporting from here.

“It’s the reality of what I see here, I am not going to water it down with a sort of ‘bothsideism’.”

Martin says the media in New Zealand tend to cover the tragic war which has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians so far — most of them women and children — and with the UN this week declaring an “Israeli-made famine” with thousands more deaths predicted in a simplistic and shallow way.

“This war is treated as a one-off event without putting it in the context of 76 years of occupation and domination by Israel and without actually challenging some of these narratives, without providing the context of why, and centring it on the violations of international law.”

It is a very serious failure and not just in the way things have been reported, but in the way editors source stories given the heavy dependency in New Zealand media on international media that themselves have been persistently and strongly criticised for institutional bias — such as the BBC, CNN, The New York Times and the Associated Press news agency, which all operate from news bureaux inside Israel.

‘No independent journalism’
“I have heard from editors that I have reached out to who have basically said, ‘No, we’re not going to publish any independent or freelance work because we depend on syndicated sources like BBC, CNN and Associated Press’.

“Which means that they are publishing news that doesn’t have a relevant New Zealand connection. Usually this is what local media need, a NZ connection, yet they will publish work from the BBC, CNN and Associated Press that has no relevance to New Zealand, or doesn’t highlight what is relevant to NZ so far as our government in action.

“And I think that is our big failure, our media has not held our government to account by asking the questions that need to be asked, in spite of the fact that those questions are easily accessed.”

Expanding on this, Martin suggests talking to people in the community that are taking part in the large protests weekly, consistently.

“Why are they doing this? Why are they giving so much of their time to protest against what Israel is doing, highlighting these justices? And yet the media has failed to engage with them in good faith,” he says.

“The media has demonised them in many ways and they kind of create gestures like what Stuff have done, like asking them to write in their opinions.

“Maybe it is well intentioned, maybe it isn’t. It opens the space to kind of more ‘equal platforming’ of very unequal narratives.

“Like we give the same airtime to the spokespeople of an army that is carrying out genocide as we are giving to the people who are facing the genocide.”

Robert Fisk on media balance and the Middle East.    Video: Pacific Media Centre

’50/50 journalism’
The late journalist Robert Fisk, the Beirut-based expert on the Middle East writing for The Independent and the prolific author of many books including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, described this phenomena as “50/50 journalism” and warned how damaging it could be.

Among many examples he gave in a 2008 visit to New Zealand, Fisk said journalists should not give “equal time” to the SS guards at the concentration camp, they should be talking to the survivors. Journalists ought to be objective and unbiased — “on the side of those who suffer”.

“They always publish Israel says, ‘dee-dah-de-dah’. That’s not reporting, reporting is finding out what is actually going on on the ground. That’s what BBC and CNN do. Report what they say, not what’s going on. I think they are very limited in terms of how they report the structural stuff,” says Martin.

“CNN, BBC and Associated Press have their place for getting immediate, urgent news out, but I am quite frustrated as the only New Zealand journalist based in the occupied West Bank or on the ground here.

“How little interest media have shown in pieces from here. Even with a full piece, free of charge, they will still find excuses not to publish, which is hard to push back on as a freelancer because ultimately it is their choice, they are the editors.

“I cannot demand that they publish my work, but it begs the question if I was a New Zealand journalist on the ground reporting from Ukraine, there would be a very different response in their eagerness to publish, or platform, what I am sharing.

“Particularly as a video and photojournalist, it is very frustrating because everything I write about is documented, I am showing it.

‘Showing with photos’
“It’s not stuff that is hearsay. I am showing them with all these photos and yet still they are reluctant to publish my work. And I think that translates into reluctance to publish anything with a Palestinian perspective. They think it is very complex and difficult to get in touch with Palestinians.

“They don’t know whether they can really trust their voices. The reality is, of course they can trust their voices. Palestinian journalists are the only journalists able to get into Gaza [and on the West Bank on the ground here].

“If people have a problem with that, if Israel has a problem with that, then they should let the international press in.”

Pointing the finger at the failure of Middle East coverage isn’t easy, Martin says. But one factor is that the generations who make the editorial decisions have a “biased view”.

“Journalists who have been here have not been independent, they have been taken here, accompanied by soldiers, on a tailored tour. This is instead of going off the tourist trail, off the media trail, seeing the realities that communities are facing here, engaging in good faith with Palestinian communities here, seeing the structural violence, drawing the connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in the West Bank — and not just the Israeli sources,” Martin says.

“And listening to the human rights organisations, the academics and the experts, and the humanitarian organisations who are all saying that this is a genocide, structural violence . . . the media still fails to frame it in that way.

‘Complete failure’
“It still fails to provide adequate context that this is very structural, very institutional — and it’s wrong.

“It’s a complete failure and it is very frustrating to be here as a journalist on the ground trying to do a good job, trying to redeem this failure in journalism.”

“Having the cover on the ground here and yet there is no interest. Editors have come back to me and said, ‘we can’t publish this piece because the subject matter is “too controversial”. It’s unbelievable that we are explicitly ignoring stories that are relevant because it is ‘controversial’. It’s just an utter failure of journalism.

“As the Fourth Estate, they have utterly failed to hold the government to account for inaction. They are not asking the right questions.

“I have had other editors who have said, ‘Oh, we’re relying on syndicated sources’. That’s our position. Or, we don’t have enough money.

That’s true, New Zealand media has a funding shortage, and journalists have been let go.

“But the truth is if they really want the story, they would find the funding.

Reach out to Palestinians
“If they actually cared, they would reach out to the journalists on the ground, reach out to the Palestinians. The reality is that they don’t care enough to be actually doing those things.

“I think that there is a shift, that they are beginning to respond more and more. But they are well behind the game, they have been complicit in anti-Arab narratives, and giving a platform to genocidal narratives from the Israeli government and government leaders without questioning, without challenging and without holding our government to account.

“The New Zealand government has been very pro-Israel, driven to side with America.

“They need to do better urgently, before somebody takes them to the International Criminal Court for complicity.”

“If words shape our consciousness, then the media holds the keys to minds.”

This sentence is not merely a metaphor, but a reality we live daily in the coverage of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, where the crimes of the occupation are turned into “acts of violence”, the siege targeting civilians into “security measures”, and the legitimate resistance into “terrorist acts”.

This linguistic distortion is not innocent; it is part of a “systematic mechanism” practised by major Western media outlets, through which they perpetuate a false image of a “conflict between two equal sides”, ignoring the fact that one is an occupier armed with the latest military technology, and the other is a people besieged in their land for decades.

Here, the ethical question becomes urgent: how does the media shift from conveying truth to becoming a tool for justifying oppression?

• READ MORE: Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them – David Robie

Western media institutions promote a colonial narrative that reproduces the discourse of Israeli superiority, using linguistic and legal mechanisms to justify genocide.

But the rise of global awareness through social media platforms and documentaries like We Are Not Numbers, produced by youth in Gaza, exposes this bias and brings the Palestinian narrative back to the forefront.

Selective coverage . . .  when injustice becomes an opinion
“Terrorism”, “self-defence”, “conflict” . . . are all terms that place the responsibility for violence on Palestinians while presenting Israel as the perpetual victim. This linguistic shift contradicts international law, which considers settlements a war crime (according to Article 8 of the Rome Statute), yet most reports avoid even describing the West Bank as “occupied territory”.

More dangerously, the issue is reduced to “violent events” without mentioning their contexts: how can the Palestinian people’s resistance be understood without addressing 75 years of displacement and the siege of Gaza since 2007? The media is like someone commenting on the flames without mentioning who ignited them.

The Western media coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza represents a blatant model of systematic bias that reproduces the Israeli narrative and justifies war crimes through precise linguistic and media mechanisms. Below is a breakdown of the most prominent practices:

Stripping historical context and portraying Palestinians as aggressor

Ignoring the occupation: Media outlets like the BBC and The New York Times ignored the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories since 1948 and focused on the 7 October 2023 attack as an isolated event, without linking it to the daily oppression such as home demolitions and arrests in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Misleading terms: The war has often been described as a “conflict between Israel and Hamas”, while Gaza is considered the largest open-air prison in the world under Israeli siege since 2007. Example: The Economist described Hamas’s attacks as “bloody”, while Israeli attacks were called “military operations”.

Dehumanising Palestinians
Language of abstraction: The BBC used terms like “died” for Palestinians versus “killed” for Israelis, according to a quantitative study by The Intercept, weakening sympathy for Palestinian victims.

Victim portrayal: While Israeli death reports included names and family ties (like “mother” or “grandmother”), Palestinians were shown as anonymous numbers, as seen in the coverage of Le Monde and Le Figaro.

Israeli political rhetoric: Media outlets reported statements by Israeli leaders such as dismissed defence minister Yoav Gallant, who described Palestinians as “human animals”, and Benjamin Netanyahu, who called them “children of darkness”, without critically analysing this rhetoric that strips them of their humanity.

Distorting resistance and linking it to terrorism
Misleading comparisons: The October 7 attack was compared to “9/11” and described as a “terrorist attack” in The Washington Post and CNN, reinforcing the “war on terror” narrative and justifying Israel’s excessive response.

Fake news: Papers like The Sun and Daily Mail promoted the story of “beheaded Israeli babies” without evidence, a story even adopted by US president Joe Biden, only to be disproven later by videos showing Hamas’ humane treatment of captives.

Selective coverage and suppression of the Palestinian narrative
Silencing journalists: Journalists such as Zahraa Al-Akhras (Global News) and Bassam Bounni (BBC) were dismissed for criticising Israel or supporting Palestine, while others were pressured to adopt the Israeli narrative.

Defaming Palestinian institutions: The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal claimed the Palestinian death toll figures were “exaggerated”, ignoring UN and human rights organisations’ reports that confirmed their accuracy.

Manipulating legal and ethical terms
Denying war crimes: Deutsche Welle stated that Israeli attacks are “not considered war crimes”, despite the destruction of hospitals and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians.

Legal misinformation: The BBC referred to Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “disputed territories”, despite the UN declaring them illegal.

The Israeli military joins settlers in attacks because terrorizing Palestinians is state policy. But Western media doesn’t report it that way.

This is what decades of occupation looks like. pic.twitter.com/PwHxad4vCV

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) July 18, 2025

Double standards in conflict coverage
Comparison with Ukraine: Western media linked support for Ukraine and Israel as “victims of aggression”, while ignoring that Israel is an occupying power under international law. Terminology shifted immediately: “invasion”, “war crimes”, “occupation” were used for Ukraine but omitted when speaking of Palestine.

According to a 2022 study by the Arab Media Monitoring Project, 90 percent of Western reports on Ukraine used language blaming Russia for the violence, compared to only 30 percent in the Palestinian case.

This contradiction exposes the underlying “racist bias”: how is killing in Europe called “genocide”, while in Gaza it is termed a “complicated conflict”? The answer lies in the statement of journalist Mika Brzezinski: “The only red line in Western media is criticising Israel.”

False neutrality: Sky News claimed it “could not verify” the Baptist Hospital massacre, despite video documentation, yet quickly adopted the Israeli narrative.

Consequences: legitimising genocide and marginalising Palestinian rights
Western media practices have contributed to normalising Israeli violence by portraying it as “legitimate defence”, while resistance is labelled as “terrorism.”

Deepening Palestinian isolation: By stripping them of the right to narrate, as shown in an academic study by Mike Berry (Cardiff University), which found emotional terms used exclusively to describe Israeli victims.

Undermining international law: By ignoring reports from organisations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which confirm Israel’s commission of war crimes.

Violating journalistic ethics . . .  when the journalist becomes the occupation’s lawyer
Journalistic codes of ethics — such as the charter of the “International Federation of Journalists” — unanimously agree that the media’s primary task is “to expose the facts without fear”. But the reality proves the opposite:

In 2023, CNN deleted an interview with a Palestinian survivor of the Jenin massacre after pressure from the Israeli lobby (according to an investigation by Middle East Eye).

The Guardian was forced to edit the headline of an article that described settlements as “apartheid” after threats of legal action.

This self-censorship turns journalism into a “copier of official statements”, abandoning the principle of “not compromising with ruling powers” emphasised by the “International Journalists’ Network”.

Toward human-centred journalism
Fixing this flaw requires dismantling biased language: replacing “conflict” with “military occupation”, and “settlements” with “illegal colonies”.

Relying on international law: such as mentioning Articles 49 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention when discussing the displacement of Palestinians.

Giving space to victims’ voices: According to an Amnesty report, 80% of guests on Western TV channels discussing the conflict were either Israeli or Western.

Holding media institutions accountable: through pressure campaigns to enforce their ethical charters (such as obligating the BBC to mention “apartheid” after the HRW report).

Conclusion
The war on Gaza has become a stark test of media ethics. While platforms like Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye have helped expose violations, major Western media outlets continue to reproduce a colonial discourse that enables Israel. The greatest challenge today is to break the silence surrounding the crimes of genocide and impose a human narrative that restores the stolen humanity of the victims.

“Occupation doesn’t just need tanks, it needs media to justify its existence.” These were the words of journalist Gideon Levy after witnessing how his camera turned war crimes into “normal news”.

If Western media is serious about its claim of neutrality, it must start with a simple step: call things by their names. Words are not lifeless letters, they are ticking bombs that shape the consciousness of generations.

Refaat Ibrahim is the editor and creator of The Resistant Palestinian Pens website, where you can find all his articles. He is a Palestinian writer living in Gaza, where he studied English language and literature at the Islamic University. He has been passionate about writing since childhood, and is interested in political, social, economic, and cultural matters concerning his homeland, Palestine. This article was first published at Pearls and Irritations social policy journal in Australia.