Western media bias towards the Israeli narrative is rooted in decades-old reporting practices that privilege official military sources, embed journalists with occupying forces, marginalise local voices, and repeatedly turn war coverage into an extension of state power. 

The bias of Western media in its coverage of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people was neither new nor surprising, but the extent of that bias was shocking, particularly given the scale of the crimes being committed around the clock for months. 

Much has been written about the shortcomings that marred Western media coverage of the war on Gaza, particularly in the first weeks of the war. What is striking, however, is that the fieldwork of correspondents from Western television channels appears remarkably similar to practices seen more than 20 years ago. 

Although a correspondent’s work is supposed to be carried out in the field, Western media largely confined themselves to sending reporters alongside Israeli occupation forces. It is self-evident that Israel would not allow them to publish narratives that contradicted its own, yet this did not deter Western media outlets from submitting to Israeli conditions. This led to a series of professional failures, such as a Fox News correspondent becoming involved in filming a staged scene purporting to show the arrest of a Hamas fighter, only for it to emerge that the supposed fighter was in fact an Israeli soldier and that the entire scene had been fabricated. Footage also circulated of foreign correspondents lying flat on the ground and claiming they were under rocket fire from the Palestinian resistance, while other people could be seen walking calmly through the frame. 

One basic principle of wartime field coverage is to assign correspondents to cover both sides of the fighting. Yet most Western media outlets confined their coverage to the Israeli side, while some stationed correspondents on the borders of the Gaza Strip, but still on the Israeli side. 

Then came the major failure when a BBC correspondent accompanied Israeli occupation forces during their raid on Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza and began presenting alongside them what they claimed were items they had found there. The narrative was widely criticised and ridiculed around the world because of its weakness, contradictions, and failure to match the scenarios promoted by the occupation regarding what it claimed were Hamas command centres beneath the hospital. 

Another basic principle of wartime field coverage is to assign correspondents to cover both sides of the conflict. Yet most Western media outlets confined their coverage to the Israeli side, while some stationed correspondents on the borders of the Gaza Strip, but still on the Israeli side, in order to create the impression of balanced coverage. Some correspondents also appeared from the hotels where they were staying in Israel to discuss developments in the war on Gaza, which runs counter to the very purpose of their field role. 

This bias appears from the outset, when Western media outlets send foreign correspondents to cover events in the Middle East. Most do not speak Arabic and know little about the complexities of the region’s political, social, economic and military landscape. 

Documenting the professional errors committed by Western media during this war is important, but more important is subjecting Western media performance to deeper analysis and examining it from multiple perspectives, including a historical one that analyses phenomena through previous experience and compares them with the present, both in terms of similarities and differences. 

This bias appears from the outset, when Western media outlets send foreign correspondents to cover events in the Middle East. Most do not speak Arabic and know little about the complexities of the political, social, economic and military landscape in this part of the world. This leads to superficial coverage filled with stereotypes and Orientalist analysis. It is worth noting that Al Jazeera distinguished itself from its launch in 1996 by avoiding these shortcomings, employing specialised local correspondents to cover major and complex events. This gave it a significant advantage over other global news networks. 

When applying a historical perspective to the performance of Western media, there are few examples more revealing than the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and the war in Iraq in 2003. During both events, Western media bias in favour of the United States became clearly apparent, along with the adoption of the US administration’s narratives and claims regarding the causes and course of the wars in both countries. Al Jazeera’s role and importance in confronting this attempt to obscure the truth also became evident. 

The US administration was keen to secure media support for the war in Afghanistan and to ensure that its own version of events prevailed, while the Pentagon devoted unprecedented attention to the media. To achieve this, the US administration adopted a number of strategies, including controlling media outlets through censorship laws that pressured them to produce reports aligned with US interests, as well as attempting to “neutralise” media organisations that sought to convey what was actually happening on the ground. One example was the US bombing of Al Jazeera’s bureau in the Afghan capital, Kabul. 

During the Iraq War, the US military introduced a new monitoring mechanism by embedding journalists with troops in the field, allowing them to join military units and assigning them places inside tanks and military bases. Before being permitted to participate, however, they faced strict conditions, most importantly that images had to be submitted for censorship and approved before being transmitted to the broadcast centre. As a result, these journalists' work was heavily influenced by the official narrative. 

In the end, journalists became an integral part of the US and British forces, turning American media into little more than a propaganda tool for the viewpoint of President George W. Bush’s administration. Virtually no critical voices scrutinised the US administration’s claims about Iraq. 

Those who did not travel with the troops filed their reports from the relatively safe lobbies of hotels and depended on the US military for access to the context of events. Journalists complained about the restrictions imposed on them and about being prevented from covering the war in certain areas. When the situation on the ground became dangerous, journalists were the first to be evacuated from the battlefield, leaving them unable to continue reporting. In the end, journalists became an integral part of US and British forces, turning American media into little more than a propaganda tool for President George W. Bush’s administration. Virtually no critical voices scrutinised the US administration’s claims about Iraq. 

Media organisations and the military exchanged interests. Fox News, for example, was owned by General Electric, one of the largest arms manufacturers, while Judith Miller, the journalist who claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, had a close relationship with Dick Cheney, George W. Bush’s vice president. The president himself and members of his administration cited falsehoods published by US media about Iraq in their speeches. 

To keep their lines of communication with the administration or the Pentagon open, journalists were required to convey and promote the official viewpoint. Most commentators avoided criticism and legitimised US military action. Those who tried to provide different coverage faced pressure to conform to the official narrative, coming from multiple directions, from the government to the media organisations themselves. 

US media did not provide a comprehensive or balanced picture of the war. They focused on the US military’s advanced technology and presented the war from an official perspective through messages designed for audiences in the United States. Al Jazeera and similar Arab satellite channels, by contrast, focused on human suffering and the destruction inflicted on Iraqi civilians. Arab networks also had better contacts on the ground with Iraqi authorities and civilians because most correspondents spoke Arabic and shared cultural, religious, and historical reference points, demonstrating the importance of employing local correspondents. Moreover, Arab networks sought to communicate with different audiences. American networks, by contrast, presented the war from an American perspective through messages tailored to audiences in the United States. 

On CNN, for example, the language of war appeared “soft” and abstract, including expressions such as “soft targets”, “carpet bombing” and “daisy cutters”. The language used by Al Jazeera, however, was direct and left viewers in no doubt that people would be killed as a result of US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. The channel’s use of direct images in its coverage of conflicts and wars also brought it closer to representing reality as it was, conveying its true face with all the misery and suffering endured by victims and marginalised people. Such images, however, often failed to reach Western television screens because they were considered “professionally inappropriate”. 

Once again, Al Jazeera’s coverage pushed US leadership in the field and in the White House to try to silence its voice or alter its approach through political and media pressure, criticism, and accusations. As in the war in Afghanistan, US pressure culminated in the bombing of Al Jazeera’s bureau in Baghdad, which resulted in the death of Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub. 

The outcome was that US media failed to fulfil their responsibilities and were used as tools of manipulation and propaganda by the Bush administration in promoting the Iraq War because of their uncritical alignment with elite or state discourse, particularly during times of war or foreign-policy crises. 

Looking back at what happened more than two decades ago, Western media are once again falling into the same patterns that entangled them in 2001 and 2003. The difference is that they no longer control the flow of information and have lost much of their credibility. Al Jazeera and social media have also helped expose ongoing Israeli war crimes and the reality of what is happening in Gaza, forcing some media outlets to modify their discourse slightly, but only after it was too late. 

Sources 

Aziz Douai, “The Soft Power of Hybrid Media: Media Convergence and Al Jazeera’s Influence”, in Al Jazeera at Twenty: Its Impact on Media, Politics and Academia, edited by Ezzeddine Abdelmoula and Noureddine Miladi, Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Doha, 2016. 

Mohammed Zayani, “The Politics of Representation and Al Jazeera’s News Culture”, in Al Jazeera at Twenty: Its Impact on Media, Politics and Academia, edited by Ezzeddine Abdelmoula and Noureddine Miladi, Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Doha, 2016. 

Douglas Kellner. (2008). “War Correspondents, the Military, and Propaganda: Some Critical Reflections.” International Journal of Communication 2, 297–330. 

Marc Lynch. (2007). Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. New York: Columbia University Press. 

Samuel Azran. (2010). Al-Jazeera and US War Coverage. New York: Peter Lang. 

Tarek Cherkaoui. (2010). Orientalism, Pan-Arabism, and Military-Media Warfare: A Comparison Between CNN and Al Jazeera Coverage of the Iraq War. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Auckland University of Technology. 

Tine Ustad Figenschou. (2005). Courting, Criticism, Censorship and Bombs: The Bush Administration’s Troubled Relations with Al-Jazeera Channel from September 11 to the War in Iraq. Unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Oslo, Norway. 

William Lafi Youmans. (2012). The Media Economics and Cultural Politics of Al Jazeera English in the United States. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, US. 

This article was originally published in Arabic on 17/01/2024