How the Western media is manufacturing consent for genocide

As Israel's genocidal war on Gaza enters its second year, Western media faces heavy criticism for biased coverage, with thousands of ground reports fueling the backlash.

In a war where at least 41,700 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed by Israel's relentless strikes, the media has taken centre stage in what is considered the world's first live-streamed genocide.

Experts argue that over the past year, media outlets have participated in "successful" manipulation, from cherry-picking words to framing narratives that acquit Israel of its crimes.

The goal of this is to manufacture consent for Israel's violence, says Gretchen King, associate professor of multimedia journalism and communication at the Lebanese American University (LAU).

William Youmans, on the other hand, notes that Israel's crimes against humanity are often viewed by the West as "unfortunate" yet "necessary."

Youmans, an associate professor at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, condemns the pervasive influence of propaganda, describing this era as a profoundly shameful moment for Western governments.

"Whatever legitimacy they possessed has been exhausted completely by their complicity in Israel's continued siege of the Levant," he asserts.

Israel-centric bias

An award-winning journalist herself, King explained to TRT World how Western media manufactures consent for Israel's bloodshed.

It starts with the muting of Palestinian voices, she said.

She asserts that "production processes within newsrooms are structured by Israeli-centric biases," as highlighted in her co-authored article, "Copyediting Palestine: Media Bias in Journalism Style Guides."

Her research examined style guides from Western media organisations regarding their coverage of Palestine.

Through a comparative content analysis of various media, including BBC articles, King found that "the reliance on Israeli narratives has been evident."

William Youmans links Israeli-centric media bias to US foreign policy, stating, "the most powerful reason for systematic media bias...is simply that US foreign policy is firmly pro-Israel."

He adds, "Almost never do media fall out of line with the foreign policy establishment sadly."

Playing with words

Israeli-centric bias is also evident in the language used by Western media outlets.

Over the past year, major Western media outlets—including Reuters, AP, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the BBC—have consistently downplayed Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

Terms like "invasion" are softened to "ground operation," and "occupation" is reframed as "Israeli presence", "control", or "open-ended control".

For example, the BBC employed legal phrasing in the headline "Israel approves largest West Bank land seizure in decades, watchdog says," framing Israel's actions as legitimate rather than acknowledging the occupation and theft of Palestinian land.

Professor King criticises these manipulation tactics employed by Western media, stating that outlets have now begun doing the same thing with Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

"The Western media and the Israelis don't call it an invasion; they call it a 'limited campaign,'" she says.

From King's perspective, every word used by Israel can be reframed through the lens of international law.

She argues that a foreign state's "evacuation order" to indigenous people in their own land amounts to "ethnic cleansing."

"This is bluewashing, this is humanitarian washing. This is pretending to be humanitarian while being genocidal—genocidal ethnic cleansing," she adds.

One's resistance is another's militancy

Western media bias becomes very apparent when comparing the coverage of Ukrainian defence against the Russian aggression to the portrayal of Palestinian resistance against Israeli invasion and occupation.

While Ukrainians are often framed as heroic and justified, Palestinian resistance is frequently marginalised or labelled as terrorism.

For example, The New York Times framed Jenin, a Palestinian city, as a symbol of "Palestinian opposition and militancy," while in another article it portrayed Ukraine as resisting Russian occupation, with the term "occupation" clearly stated in the headline.

In another example, headlines describe Ukraine as "invaded," while Israel's invasion is portrayed as "sending troops" to another land. Additionally, Russia's narrative is presented with scare quotes, signalling skepticism, whereas Israel's narrative is reported as fact, without scare quotes, highlighting a clear double standard in coverage.

According to King, "journalists must use facts and history to challenge power; otherwise, they become propagandists complicit in genocide".

In Palestine coverage by Western media, "There's the failure of the media to put any news with regard to Palestine in context, whether that's international law, historical context, the Palestinian perspective, or the human rights context," she says.

For King, "there is the absolute complicity in genocide," and she makes clear that she wants to see Western mainstream media "will hopefully be held accountable for" their complicity.

Serving an agenda

A leaked New York Times memo has also revealed that the outlet's style guide advises journalists covering Israel's war on Gaza to avoid using specific terms.

According to a copy obtained by The Intercept in April 2024, reporters were instructed by NYT -which has been awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting- to restrict the use of terms like "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing," and to avoid referring to Palestinian land as "occupied territory."

The memo also discouraged the use of the word "Palestine," except in rare cases, and advised against describing areas of Gaza as "refugee camps," despite their recognition by the United Nations as such, which house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees displaced during past Israeli–Arab wars.

King says, "If the media is hesitant to call a refugee camp a refugee camp, then they're serving an agenda."

"That agenda is to send more bombs to Israel."

Throughout the war, American outlets like The New York Times and Associated Press and British media such as Reuters and BBC have repeatedly avoided explicitly stating that Israel bombed a refugee camp.

Instead, they used phrases like "tents housing Palestinians," "school where displaced people were sheltering," "near a building sheltering displaced people," or simply "Gaza camp," withholding the full context and facts from their audiences.

King said, "If Americans truly understood that those bombs were being used to commit crimes, they would stop them. If they are not stopping them, then consent has been manufactured."

Fluidity of facts based on source

Pro-Israeli reporting is likewise evident in "the way headlines are written," King argues, where Western media outlets often present the Israeli narrative as fact while casting doubt on statements from Palestinian sources.

For example, in a July article titled "Gaza officials say 90 Palestinians killed as Israel targets Hamas military chief," news agency Reuters not only downplays the cause—an Israeli airstrike—but also casts doubt on the killing of Palestinians by framing the headline as "Hamas military chief targeted."

The reporting faced severe backlash on social media for its lack of balanced coverage, reflecting an Israeli-centric bias. By stating "Hamas military chief targeted" without clarifying that this is Israel's claim, the coverage failed to provide necessary context.

In another example from the New York Times, in an article titled "Under Rules of War, 'Proportionality' in Gaza Is Not About Evening the Score," the outlet provides an instance of Israeli-centric reporting.

It appears to attempt a legal justification for the civilian death toll in Gaza, framing the discussion in a way that aligns with Israel's perspective.

Youmans comments on the dehumanisation of Palestinians in media narratives surrounding their deaths, stating, "US news media have failed the public in epic ways."

However, Youmans asserts that “this reflects endemic racism that sees Arabs and Muslims as disposable people whose deaths are not worth mourning."

'Successful' mission

King said it's important to recognise the relationship between state policy, media propaganda, and the economy, arguing that the agenda of Western media is to manufacture consent through propaganda.

This facilitates the ability to drop large quantities of bombs without encountering significant opposition or backlash at home.

"Without US backing or other Western governments' support, the Zionist regime would not be able to drop 85 tons of bombs on Beirut in seconds. Those bombs come from America," she says.

What limits objectivity in Western newsrooms is that those media outlets are "structured by the political and economic elite in those countries — politicians, corporate owners, and the corporate media itself," according to King.

"I don't understand how people in the West can go on every day and not commit themselves to some kind of action to stop the genocide. That, for me, is successful consent manufacturing."

Youmans links power and propaganda, stating, "Those with power benefit from public confusion. So much of the pro-Israeli propaganda is intended to mystify the conflict, to make it appear more complicated than it really is."

He argues that this confusion assists Israel in preserving what it has "gained," adding, "At the end of the day, it's about a massive land grab and kicking people from their homes. And Israel is entirely organised to preserve these ill-gotten gains, a historical injustice."

He further emphasises, "The entire effect of this shallow reporting—without providing historical context—tends to uphold the status quo, which benefits those in power."

Beyond news media

For King, bias extends beyond news media and is rooted in the entire industry, including Hollywood and entertainment, which perpetuates stereotypes of "others," particularly Arabs, who are often depicted as "billionaires, belly dancers, or bombers."

"There's a portrayal that 'they are like us,' while 'the others are not like us,'" she explains, referencing John Pilger's book The Fire Next Time, in which he discusses how imperialist newsroom policies shape such narratives. Pilger noted that in UK newsrooms, reporting was centered on those who were "like us," while the rest of the world was treated as "the others."

"Israelis were made to be like Americans (for so many years)…That's how consent was manufactured."

"This is why the media can align itself with Israeli narratives and humanise Israelis as the only victims, while Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims are never the victims. Otherwise, the whole media industry would crumble."

King further argues that "victim-blaming, dehumanisation, and the perpetuation of orientalist discourses" by Western media are frequently employed tactics that are not new and certainly "didn't start on October 7."