Uncovering Biased Pro-Israel Reporting – Western media under scrutiny
Western media has become biased and have taken sides with Israel, supporting its atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza.
In recent years, concerns have been raised about the apparent bias in Western media, particularly regarding their stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Critics argue that many mainstream Western media outlets have taken sides, offering what they perceive as unwavering support to Israel, even in the face of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
This bias, has manifested in the form of skewed narratives that fail to adequately represent the realities of Palestinians living under occupation. The Western media’s alleged partiality is particularly evident in their coverage of the atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza, where issues such as civilian casualties, displacement, and human rights violations have been met with what some view as insufficient scrutiny.
These concerns have sparked widespread debate about media ethics, objectivity, and the responsibility of journalists to provide balanced and unbiased reporting, especially in conflicts with far-reaching humanitarian consequences.
Israel has killed more than 500 people, most of them women and children, in a bombing of Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza recently.
The Israeli government has taken a new stand to make this situation smooth in its favour. According to the Israeli government, the rocket attack on the Gaza hospital is actually the handiwork of the militant organization Islamic Jihad, whose rocket was misfired from Gaza and accidentally fell on the hospital and Islamic Jihad is responsible for these deaths.
All international and Western newspapers immediately embraced the Israeli narrative and removed the Israeli bombing from their reports and termed it as an explosion on a Gaza hospital.
The Washington Post released a verified video clip of the aerial bombing of a Gaza hospital.
The paper reported, “A video of the strike on the hospital, verified by The Washington Post, captures the first sounds of an explosion — a whirring noise in the air and then a loud blast — as the camera pans to show plumes of smoke, tinged orange from the flames, across a nighttime sky.”
This is not enough. From banning Palestinian content from all major social media platforms to the suspension of Muslim journalists, there has been biased pro-Israel reporting in western media. MSNBC temporarily took Mehdi Hassan, Ayman Mohi-ud-Din and Ali Welshi off-screen.
In response, the network termed the three anchors took out of the previously scheduled rotation after attack on Israel and the outbreak of war.
The report included that some MSNBC staff are concerned about the lineup changes as they feel “all three hosts have some of the deepest knowledge of the conflict.”
Similarly, BBC suspended seven journalists for posting or liking content linked to Palestinians, terming that they praised Hamas’ attacks on Israel on social media, with several figures associated with its Arabic channel saying civilian victims should not be treated as innocent civilians.
The seven journalists named in the Camera report are Mahmoud Sheleib, the senior broadcast journalist, freelancer broadcast journalist Aya Hossam, correspondent Sally Nabil, Cairo-based Salma Khattab, Beirut-based religious affairs correspondent Sanaa Khouri, Beirut-based editor Nada Abdelsamad, and Amr Fekry, a sports correspondent and pundit at BBC Arabic.
BBC clarified that Hossam will not be hired for projects going forward.
British newspaper sacks cartoonist for sketching Israeli PM
British newspaper The Guardian has fired a cartoonist who portrayed the Israeli Prime Minister. The cartoonist, Steve Bell’s showed Benjamin Netanyahu wearing boxing gloves and preparing to operate on his stomach, with a sketch of the Gaza Strip and a caption for Gaza refugees, in the cartoon.
A spokesman for the newspaper said that Steve Bell has been a leading cartoonist of the Guardian for 40 years, there will be no further renewal of Steve Bell’s contract.
The Guardian newspaper also terminated the contract of its veteran cartoonist Steve Bell, who complained last week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cartoon was removed on social media platform ‘X’.
TikTok told the Washington Post that Gaza/Hamas is banned from its platform. X, formerly known as Twitter, said last week it had removed hundreds of Hamas-linked accounts. Aya Omar, an artificial intelligence engineer, told the New York Times that she was unable to see Palestinian media accounts she reads regularly because Meta and Instagram were blocking those accounts.
The Hampton Institute, a think tank, said in a post on X that Instagram and Facebook are actively blocking posts about the factual history of Israel/Palestine.
Social media users have complained that posts and accounts have been suspended or blocked due to pro-Palestinian content in the wake of Israel’s heavy bombing of the Gaza Strip.
The New York Times has claimed in its recent articles that thousands of Palestinian supporters say that their posts have been suppressed or removed from Facebook and Instagram, even if these messages do not violate the rules of the platforms.
The European Commission has launched an investigation into X over the summer following warnings about misinformation linked to Hamas and Israel. X was given 24 hours by the European Union to resolve the issue or face penalties under the Digital Services Act.
TikTok CEO Shu Zhi Chiu was given 24 hours by the European Commission to show how his company is protecting young people from violent content and misinformation about incidents related to Israel and Hamas.
