Israel On 11 October 2023, the
Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (KAN) started a channel that scrolls through the names of the people killed in the October 7 attack, much like the broadcasts on Israel's Memorial Day. On 22 October, home front alerts started showing in English on
i24NEWS's English channel. On 26 December 2023, an anti-tank missile from a Hezbollah unit hit next to
Channel 13 News team while they were interviewing farmer at
Dovev, for an article following a prior Hezbollah assault that killed an employee of the
Israel Electric Corporation, and injured five workers who were repairing electric lines. On 6 January, while an Israeli journalist crew carried out an interview in the middle of a road in
Tuffah, they were fired upon. Omri Assenheim, who conducted the interview, commented that "journalism must be done during the war as well, even if it's dangerous. I don't have a death wish." On 13 February 2024, Israel's
Second Authority for Television and Radio opened an inquiry into
Channel 13 for a show panelist saying "Netanyahu Wants Hostages Dead". On February 20, A bill proposed by
Zvika Fogel would grant the power to close local offices and restrict access to websites of international media outlets deemed "harmful to state security" to National Security Minister
Itamar Ben-Gvir. Between February and March 2024, mainstream Israeli television networks
Channels 14 and
13 aired videos, reportedly described as "
snuff films" which appear to show detained Palestinian prisoners being mistreated inside Israeli prisons. The videos are described as actual interrogation sessions of prisoners, who are shown bound and blindfolded, while being made to kneel on the floor. A warden is recorded stating "They have no mattresses ... They have nothing…we control them 100%—their food, their shackling, their sleep ... [we] show them we are the masters of the house". In August 2024, an IDF soldier who was
accused of raping a Palestinian detainee at the
Sde Teiman detention camp was interviewed on television.
Haaretz Itay Rom has criticized the media for its alleged bias against Israel. He gave several examples of "flimsy reporting" from
CNN,
BBC and
Sky News, of which he believes result from ingrained belief that Israel is the "villain" of the story, which allows any claim made against it—even ones that are proven false—to pass. He wrote that "while attitudes towards Israel's claims is somewhere along the spectrum between healthy journalistic skepticism and complete distrust, Hamas's claims about the numbers of killed civilians in the Strip are accepted as the word of God." He also has raised criticisms against Israeli media, much of which, he states, "ignores and erases the Gazan story". Israeli comedy show
Eretz Nehederet has aired several sketches in English since the beginning of the war, criticizing the BBC's alleged anti-Israel bias. One of the sketches shows the BBC taking Hamas's attribution at face value immediately, praising Hamas as “the most credible not-terrorist organization in the world” and ignoring a Hamas fighter that admits firing rocket at own hospital. Another sketch portrayed a sympathetic mock "interview" with Yahya Sinwar, stating "Hamas freedom fighters peacefully attacked Israel", and a mock BBC anchor saying "Hamas is left with no human shields at all! So unfair", later referring to Israeli kidnapped crying babies as "torturing him through sleep deprivation" and "occupying his house". The sketches went viral online. The
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has a designated
Spokesperson's Unit which is responsible for the IDF's information policy and deals with the media relations during peace and wartime. It serves as a liaison between the military and the domestic and foreign media markets as well as the general public and is a key player for the
public diplomacy of Israel.
Anat Saragusti said that most mainstream Israeli media "completely ignored what's going on on the Palestinian side – the human casualties there, the numbers of children killed in this war. The Israeli audience simply did not see that at all." A report from Israeli think tank
Molad found that only 3% of newscasts on
Channel 12 mentioned the war's
impact on Gazan civilians.
Czechia Public media such as
ČT24 or iRozhlas and mainstream channels such as
Seznam.cz have a strong pro-Israel stance.
France At the start of Ramadan, the French newspaper
Libération ran a cartoon mocking the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, showing a woman scolding a man chasing after rats and cockroaches because it was not yet time to break fast.
Qatar On 25 October,
Axios reported that US Secretary of State
Antony Blinken had asked
Qatari prime minister
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani to moderate
Al Jazeera's coverage of the war. It is believed that Blinken was referring to Al Jazeera's
Arabic language channel and not its
English channels.
Iran: Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting published images of the capture of commanders of
Nagorno-Karabakh by the
Azerbaijani army in
September 2023 as the capture of Israeli commanders by Hamas. Mohammadreza Bagheri, a presenter at channel 3 of Iran Broadcasting, said that the viewers should not worry about the dead or wounded Israelis, no matter if they are soldiers or civilians, because they are all occupiers who live in the lands and homes of Palestinians.
United Kingdom In March 2024, analysis by the
Muslim Council of Britain's Centre for Media Monitoring found that British media coverage had consistently been "favourable to an Israeli narrative which has constantly promoted the attacks on Gaza and in the West Bank as a war between light and darkness".
BBC In October 2023, the
BBC was criticized by journalists and the UK
Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps, for using the term "militants" over "terrorists" to refer to members of
Hamas, which the British government considers to be a terrorist organization. The BBC responded with a statement saying that to report objectively, they would not use the term "terrorist" without attribution, and that they had featured contributors who have described Hamas as terrorists. In November 2023
BBC News Arabic launched
Gaza Daily in response to the ongoing conflict and to provide any listeners in Gaza with the latest information and developments, along with safety advice and where to find humanitarian aid. Analysis of BBC coverage by
openDemocracy published at the start of 2024 found Palestinian perspectives were "totally absent" from the network's coverage, and that the BBC's coverage regularly described Israeli deaths with words like "murder", "massacre", "atrocity", and "slaughter" but not for Palestinian deaths.
Dismissal of Steve Bell On 19 October,
The Guardian announced the dismissal of editorial cartoonist
Steve Bell, who had been contributing to the newspaper since 1983, after he made a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu holding a scalpel and preparing to make a Gaza Strip-shaped incision in his abdomen. While Bell said it was inspired by a similar caricature of US President
Lyndon Johnson during the
Vietnam War, he said he was accused of antisemitism for allegedly evoking the "pound of flesh" demanded by the Jewish character
Shylock in
William Shakespeare's play
The Merchant of Venice.
Piers Morgan Uncensored Piers Morgan hosted numerous interviews regarding Gaza on his show
Piers Morgan Uncensored. Morgan interviewed Egyptian comedian, television host and surgeon
Bassem Youssef, who is best known for his
political satire, on October 17 and November 1. Youssef pointed out the context of the
Israel-Palestine conflict, the juxtaposition against the
Ukrainian-Russia war and the ongoing
Gaza war often in his satirical humor. Morgan has been criticized for his frequent use of the question "
Do you condemn Hamas?" at the beginning of interviews with pro-Palestinian guests, by
Mehdi Hasan,
Bassem Youssef, and others.
The Jewish Chronicle Neve Gordon—in an examination of the appearances of the word 'antisemitism' before and after October 7, 2023 in
The Jewish Chronicle, the oldest Jewish newspaper—argues that "the data reveals that TJC has been exaggerating and instrumentalising a Zionist notion of antisemitism to foment moral panic, mobilising the language of trauma and injury to continuously reassert a notion of Jewish victimhood" in support of a "justificatory framework that operates by claiming injury and then using the alleged injury to set in motion a series of oppressive actions against individuals, groups and institutions."
Other In January 2024, a news report on
Sky News received heavy criticism for describing a lethal Israeli shooting of a three-year-old toddler as the death of a "young lady" after "accidentally a stray bullet found its way into the van".
Sky News apologized "unreservedly" to MK
Danny Danon for the "complete inappropriateness " of a Sky correspondent asking Danon how his calls for the "relocation" for Gazans were different than "relocations" that occurred during World War II. In an open letter, Danon urged
Sky to fire the woman who had asked him the question. A January 2024 interview between
Julia Hartley-Brewer and
Mustafa Barghouti on
TalkTV sparked more than 15,000 complaints to
Ofcom after Hartley-Brewer repeatedly cut off and screamed at Barghouti. During a public discussion titled "The Challenges and Dilemmas of Covering the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," Janine Zacharia, a former Middle East correspondent and Stanford lecturer, provided valuable insights into how major news organizations approach reporting on the Gaza war. The event, hosted by Stanford's Department of Communication, was part of a series of educational initiatives organized by the university to enhance comprehension of the conflict's intricate history and complexities.
United States General coverage According to Journalist
Rami George Khouri, there are three types of media in the United States: The mainstream media, which is steadily losing its advertising and audience, and which broadly reflects the views of the American and Israeli governments; Independent and progressive media that challenge mainstream views but struggle to survive financially; and the kaleidoscopic world of social media that dominates the young under-30 audience. People who get their news primarily from mainstream TV and cable channels "are more supportive of Israel's war effort, less likely to think Israel is committing war crimes", wrote
Ryan Grim, a journalist at the progressive publication
The Intercept. But Americans who rely on social media, podcasts and YouTube are generally on the side of the Palestinians. Following the
self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, U.S. media sources were criticized for failing to mention Bushnell's reason for self-immolating — opposition to the
Gaza genocide.
Axios reported tensions between White House press secretary
Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council spokesman
John Kirby. Y.L. Al-Sheikh, in an editorial in
The Nation, wrote that if Biden was the public face of his administration's policies in Gaza, then Kirby, Jean-Pierre, and Matthew Miller were its "robotic enforcers." According to an analysis, major US newspapers like
The New York Times,
The Washington Post and the
Los Angeles Times have demonstrated a clear bias in their coverage of the Gaza conflict, favoring Israel.
The Intercept, a US-based news outlet, reported on January 9 that these leading newspapers consistently portrayed Palestinians in a negative light during Israel's attacks on Gaza. In late October 2023, the
New York Times corrected its initial acceptance of Hamas's account of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital blast in Gaza City; other mainstream news outlets remained silent or corrected their reports without admitting fault. In 2024, failures to disclose a source's connection to Hamas were noted in the case of Hussein Owda, by three outlets (
NYT, NBC News and Al Jazeera). An analysis conducted by
The Intercept revealed that
The New York Times,
The Washington Post and the
Los Angeles Times exhibited a consistent bias against Palestinians in their coverage of Israel's war on Gaza. These prominent print media outlets hold significant sway in shaping American perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, they largely overlooked the profound consequences of Israel's siege and bombing campaign on children and journalists residing in the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, these major U.S. newspapers placed disproportionate emphasis on Israeli casualties during the conflict and employed emotive language to depict the killings of Israelis, while neglecting to do the same for Palestinians.
CNN A report by
The Intercept detailed that
CNN's coverage of the war undergoes review by the Israeli military's censor. The report indicated that terms such as "war crime" and "genocide" were not allowed to be used on-air. An additional report by
The Intercept found major U.S. media outlets skewed their coverage in favor of Israelis, using the word "horrific" to describe Israeli suffering 36 times versus only 4 times for Palestinians. It also found the words "child" or "children" were rarely used when discussing Palestinian minors. CNN faced criticism for not airing South Africa's introductory remarks during the
South Africa v. Israel case at the
International Court of Justice. CNN staff accused the network of being so biased in favor of Israel that it was committing "journalistic malpractice." In leaked audio from an internal meeting, host
Christine Amanpour expressed "real distress" over CNN's editorial policies regarding the war. In an op-ed in
Al Jazeera,
American University of Beirut professor
Rami George Khouri stated, "Mainstream media organisations in the West, from the
New York Times and the
Wall Street Journal to CNN and NBC, have long helped Israel spread its propaganda and achieve its political aims... For example, they usually refer to blatant acts of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement in Gaza as 'evacuations', and claim Israel is 'defending itself' against 'terror.'" In September 2024, CNN journalists
Dana Bash and
Jake Tapper accused
U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib of
antisemitism for supposedly questioning Michigan Attorney General
Dana Nessel's ability to do her job due to her being Jewish, in response to Nessel's decision to prosecute
pro-Palestinian campus protesters from the
University of Michigan. Tlaib had not made such a comment about Nessel's ethnicity in an interview with the
Detroit Metro Times, where she had talked about anti-Palestinian discrimination. Police protection ramped up in Dearborn following Stalinsky's article, with U.S. President
Joe Biden stating that Dearborn shouldn't be blamed for "the words of a small few." Dearborn mayor
Abdullah Hammoud called Stalinsky's editorial "bigoted" and "Islamophobic." Congressmember
Pramila Jayapal and Senator
Gary Peters both condemned Stalinsky's article.
The New York Times A
New York Times article in early February 2024 by
Thomas Friedman compared Middle Eastern countries to parasites and insects and was condemned as racist.
The New York Times was accused of major discrepancies between its coverage of the
allegation of sexual assault on 7 October and family testimony. One of the article's authors,
Anat Schwartz, was found to have liked posts calling to "turn Gaza into a slaughterhouse."
The Intercept stated that the New York Times had responded to pressures from
CAMERA and "consistently delegitimized Palestinian deaths and cultivated 'a gross imbalance' in coverage to pro-Israeli sources and voices." Writing in
LitHub, professor
Steven Thrasher wrote that the coverage of the war by
The New York Times was "assisting the military goals of American empire". In April 2024,
The Intercept reported on a leaked internal memo from
The New York Times, which told writers to avoid the terms "genocide," "ethnic cleansing," and "occupied territory" and not to use the term Palestine "except in very rare cases."
The Intercept reported that a 2024 quantitative analysis of more than 1000 articles from major newspapers including
The New York Times showed a consistent bias against Palestinians. The analysis revealed a disproportionate focus on Israeli deaths, the use of emotive language when describing the killings of Israelis but not Palestinians, and an imbalanced portrayal of antisemitic incidents in the U.S., with minimal attention given to anti-Muslim racism following October 7. The findings include that the terms "Israeli" or "Israel" appear more frequently than "Palestinian" or related variations, despite Palestinian deaths significantly exceeding Israeli deaths. On average, Palestinians were mentioned once for every two Palestinian deaths, while Israelis were mentioned eight times for every Israeli death, a rate 16 times higher per death than that of Palestinians. A 2024
Bar Ilan study of 1,398
NYT articles found that 647 articles (46%) expressed empathy only towards Palestinians, while 147 articles (10.5%) expressed empathy only towards Israelis. Of 276 Top News headlines in 7 months, 55% expressed empathy only toward Palestinians, and 5.8 % expressed empathy towards Israelis; 130 of these headlines criticized Israel, while only 6 headlines criticized Hamas. By omitting mention of deaths of Hamas fighters, Pinker argued, the
NYT led readers to believe Israel was simply bombing Gaza, "diminishing Hamas’s responsibility for their situation and the continuation of the war". == Double standards in media coverage ==