mastermind
Rest In Power Kobe
Coverage of Hate in the U.S.
Similarly, when it comes to how the Gaza conflict translates to hate in the U.S., the major papers paid more attention to antisemitic attacks than to ones against Muslims. Overall, there was a disproportionate focus on racism toward Jewish people, versus racism targeting Muslims, Arabs, or those perceived as such. During the period of The Intercept’s study, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times mentioned antisemitism more than Islamophobia (549 versus 79) — and this was before the “campus antisemitism” meta-controversy that was contrived by Republicans in Congress beginning the week of December 5.Despite many high-profile instances of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism during the survey period, 87 percent of mentions of discrimination were about antisemitism, versus 13 percent mentions about Islamophobia, inclusive of related terms.
A projection declares the Washington Post “complicit in genocide” during a march for Gaza on a worldwide day of action for Palestine on Oct. 12, 2023.
Photo: Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP
When Major Newspapers Fail
Overall, Israel’s killings in Gaza are not given proportionate coverage in either scope or emotional weight as the deaths of Israelis on October 7. These killings are mostly presented as arbitrarily high, abstract figures. Nor are the killings described using emotive language like “massacre,” “slaughter,” or “horrific.” Hamas’s killings of Israeli civilians are consistently portrayed as part of the group’s strategy, whereas Palestinian civilian killings are covered almost as if they were a series of one-off mistakes, made thousands of times, despite numerous points of evidence indicating Israel’s intent to harm civilians and civilian infrastructure.The result is that the three major papers rarely gave Palestinians humanizing coverage. Despite this asymmetry, polls show shifting sympathy toward Palestinians and away from Israel among Democrats, with massive generational splits driven, in part, by a stark difference in news sources. By and large, young people are being informed of the conflict from TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, and older Americans are getting their news from print media and cable news.
Biased coverage in major newspapers and mainstream television news is impacting general perceptions of the war and directing viewers toward a warped view of the conflict. This has led to pro-Israel pundits and politicians blaming pro-Palestinian views on social media “misinformation.”
Analysis of both print media and cable news, however, make it clear that, if any cohort of media consumers is getting a slanted picture, it’s those who get their news from established mass media in the U.S.
