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Hamas claimed responsibility Sunday for a deadly rocket attack on the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel as cease-fire negotiations dragged on with no breakthrough in sight. The talks are viewed by some U.S. officials as the “last chance” to avoid a return to all-out war in Gaza.

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First, I noticed that the headline implicitly foreshadows that if a ceasefire doesn't occur, it would be because of this attack. Second, the lede reflects two concepts that we learned about "language-word choice" and "orientalist discourses". for example, the word war appears repeatedly instead of the word "genocide". In addition, describing the Hamas as terror thus representing Palestinians as terrorists which was always the case in the western media. Moreover, the author refers back to Oct 7 and thus "missing context" of the Nakba dating back to 1948 and the massacres that happened even before.

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This article, which is rife with disinformation, displays anti-Palestinian bias from its very start as is exhibited through its title and lede.

From this screenshot alone, orientalist discourse is prevalent such that Hamas is referred to as terrorists / a terrorist organization four times, as opposed to what Hamas actually is - a resistance group that has the right to armed resistance under international law (here we can see that the legal context is missing). We can also see orientalist discourse in the usage of language such as ‘extreme acts of sexual violence’ to describe what happened, which is especially noteworthy considering the UN report itself does not use such phrasings.

An Israeli-centric framework is also at play, as we can see from the subtitle “Israeli fm complained", where the “Israeli” occupation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is quoted, but not a single Palestinian is quoted. This subheading additionally represents anti-Palestinian bias because its message is not central to the aim of the article, it is just added to push forward an Israeli-centric frame – that Hamas is a terrorist group and its supporters should be sanctioned. This “Israeli” narrative continues throughout the rest of the article which is not in this screenshot, such that most of the article is direct quotations from the occupation’s spokespeople.

This article also has a lot of missing contexts. For one, Hamas's legal right to armed resistance is not mentioned. The UN article also does not confirm that Hamas carried out acts of sexual violence, it only says there are “reasonable grounds to believe,” which is not at all what the article reports when using words such as “UN finally recognizes.” The article also clearly omits essential parts of the report such as who was interviewed, failing to mention that all evidence comes from secondhand accounts. Additionally, the article mentions October 7 in a void, failing to mention the occupation and the history that led to the act of resistance on October 7.

Finally, we can see the constant asymmetry in the article and general reporting of Fox News. This can be seen in the word choice such as ‘killing’ of the women, whereas in other articles of Fox News, Palestinians either die or are ‘allegedly killed.’   Fox News also does not report on the continuous sexual violence that the IOF commits against Palestinians, women, men, and children, and that the IOF has been committing long before October 7.

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Shireen Abu Akleh did not simply "die"

Firstly,

The New York Times ran the headline “Shireen Abu Akleh, Trailblazing Palestinian Journalist, Dies at 51". In comparison with the other post for the same newspaper we observed that they used the word "Killed" when it came to American journalist in Ukraine.

A double standard is at play here: why is media coverage of Ukraine and Palestinians so asymmetrical?

The truth is: Palestinians are depicted as less deserving of our sympathy because they are seen as less than human.

As a result of major outrage against the New York Times, the headline was later changed to “Trailblazing Palestinian Journalist Killed in West Bank.” While the change in the headline reflects the importance of persistently raising our voices against mainstream media’s complicity in obscuring the truth, the revised headline still keeps the identity of Shireen’s killer and the cause of her death vague, while the article gives weight to the Israeli military’s framing of the shooting, which contradicted eyewitness reports by fellow journalists who were on the scene with Shireen. Also, even after changing the headline, the NYT inserted the word ‘killed’ in the title. While it was known that the journalist was shot dead, either deliberately or mistakenly, either by Palestinians or by Israelis, it is strange that NYT chose to omit it from the headline that she was killed by a bullet. It took a month-long New York Times investigation to reach the same conclusion that eyewitnesses had immediately reported: that the gunfire that killed Shireen came from the position of an Israeli military vehicle. It is far from the first time the Israeli military has contradicted journalists’ reports from the scene.
The utilization of the passive voice, particularly through the term "died," without explicitly illustrating the event itself, stands as one of the defensive and manipulative tactics employed by Western media outlets to obscure or distort public perceptions.

On the day of the shooting, Israeli military spokesperson Ran Kochav told Army Radio that Abu Akleh had been "filming and working for a media outlet amidst armed Palestinians. They're armed with cameras, if you'll permit me to say so," according to The Times of Israel.

It seems that the camera of Shireen was more powerful than Israeli weapons.

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The choices we make – to label one side the aggressor and the other the victim; or to humanize one side and not the other – elevate and perpetuate narratives that treat certain people as more human than others.

The truth is: We are preconditioned not to see Palestinian humanity because colonialism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia are still the dominant lens through which states, institutions, people, and media in the West view the world (although geopolitical interests are, of course, also at play).

This is why, in this screenshot, Palestinians “die” while Israelis are “killed”.

Yes, Hamas, the Palestinian militant and political group that governs the Gaza Strip, is responsible for the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians and the taking of hundreds of hostages on 7 October. But the Israeli government has also been responsible for killing thousands of Palestinian civilians since. And before 7 October, 3,803 Palestinian civilians had been killed – compared to 177 Israeli civilians – since 2008, according to the UN.

The passive voice (have died) is often decried in media style guides. One of the classic Elements of Style by Strunk and White guidelines is USE THE ACTIVE VOICE!!! White apparently repeated it with increasing passion several times. But when it comes to Palestine, the media are militant about using passive voice. The difference in active and passive voice is symptomatic of anti-Palestinian racism.

Focusing of CNN on Hamas "brutal attack on Israel" without putting the incident in the context of Israel’s brutal occupation and oppression of Palestinians for more than half a century, creates dangerous false narratives. The word "attack" emphasizes how Hamas actively attacked Israelis, but Gazans "have died", as if there are some sort of natural occurrence, rather than missiles being actively fired by Israel.

Add to this when saying: "unexpected and brutal attack on Israel" removes Palestinians from the picture, as if Israeli suffering is the only kind of suffering worth mentioning first. Ironically, this approach can in itself lead to a biased portrayal of the events.

The expression "the military campaign launched in response by Israel" is giving the Israel the right to defend itself, but the practices on the battlefield (1000 dead Palestinian in comparison to 1400 killed Israelis) brings us to the point of genocide in Gaza Strip. In the event of self- defense, you may not violate the rules of international law, nor may you target civilians, and any crime is not permitted under the justification of self-defense.

As Frantz Fanon taught, it is always the case that the burden of liberation is on the natives themselves. So the least we can do is refuse to participate in the discourse that accords unequal rights, that uses unequal language, and that demands impossible standards of the resistance while giving a green light to massive violence by the oppressor.

The biased language used to describe Palestinians can be painfully obvious.

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The headline, "Gaza death toll tops 18,600 as Israeli attacks continue," may introduce bias through its wording. The term "tops" might subtly imply a mutual conflict rather than an ongoing assault on Gaza and its Palestinian population by Israeli forces. This choice of language could contribute to a narrative that obscures the power dynamics and the disproportionate impact of the conflict on Palestinians, potentially fostering unintentional bias.

In the lede, the phrase "At least 18,608 Palestinians have been killed in the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, the Health Ministry said Wednesday" quantifies the human toll but doesn't provide detailed information about civilian casualties. This omission creates room for ambiguity and could contribute to a biased narrative by not emphasizing the impact on Palestinian civilians. The absence of specific details about civilian casualties may perpetuate a narrative that downplays the suffering of Palestinian civilians, potentially reinforcing an anti-Palestinian bias.

Moreover, the lede mentions the Israeli death toll in the Hamas attack as 1,200, according to official figures. While providing a comparative aspect, this can introduce bias if not accompanied by a detailed breakdown of civilian casualties and the overall impact of Israeli attacks. Without this context, the comparative framing may perpetuate a biased portrayal, reinforcing a narrative that positions Israelis as a self-defense entity and Palestinians as oppressors. This aligns with King and Jegić's analysis of media style guides discrediting Palestinians by providing selective context.

In essence, the aforementioned aspects, when analyzed in the context of scholarly insights such as Siddiqui and Zaheer's study on media coverage of the Israeli occupation, underscore the importance of critically examining language choices in media reporting. These biases may unintentionally contribute to narratives that diminish the violence perpetrated against Palestinians, reinforcing a portrayal of Israelis as a self-defense entity. Such unintentional biases may align with an Orientalist view, reflecting the need for media consumers to be vigilant and demand more balanced representations of the ongoing conflict.

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This article was published on the CNN official website yesterday,obscuring and distorting the truth intentionally. The video shows an israeli soldier shooting an uarmed mentally disabled palestinian man to death in west bank,palestine .this shows how western media is once again, fully complicit in israel's genocide aganist the people of palestine.The choice of words in this media report was made to contribute to biased portrayals, reinforcing negative stereotypes or downplaying the experiences of palestinians under occupation.anyone would notice that the nationality of the victim was clearly mentioned while the criminal was vaguely described.

another example, is the difference between the headlines depending on the victim and the criminal especially in the war going right now in gaza, when israeli civilians dies the headline would be " hamas killed [] israeli civilians" while when palestinian civilians die the headline is changed into something like" [] palestinians were killed".

and to that i say :using the present perfect tenses and vaguley written headlines will not make genocide, ethnic cleansing and killing of children justified.

I think it is essential for media consumers to engage critically with news sources, seek information from diverse outlets, and be aware of potential biases.

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Framework by King & Jegić, 2024: https://nuevaepoca.revistalatinacs.org/index.php/revista/article/view/2052/4611

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In this news instance, the anti-Palestinian bias is prominent from the beginning. To elaborate, the headline leaves out the option for a Palestinian standpoint, with the possibility of sensationalism, because of the way it is framed. Moreover, the word choice to describe the revolution and form of resistance of Palestine on October 7, is extremely amplified: "Hamas death squads", “terrorist attack”, “gruesome”, “unseen”, "the October 7th massacre", "all the barbarities", “the terror organization that brutalized our people”… With all the oppression and Israeli occupation force occurring since the Nakba in 1948, along with the traumatic events Palestinians have been experiencing, powerful western countries such as France and the USA, have never given such significance to an “attack” as they are doing it throughout the current war. It is notable that this news piece was released by "Fox News", an American news source, which is not a coincidence. Therefore, an anti-Palestinian discourse is represented, with Norman's (2023) article being entirely biased against Palestine. In fact, Kawash (2023) emphasized in her AI’s anti-Palestinian bias revealing method, how AI systems, which are controlled and trained by the same countries supporting Israel, lack of neutrality, which is a clear anti-Palestinian bias proof.

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This article by AP news is full of anti Palestinian media bias that covers orientalist discourses with addition to Israeli agenda setting.

The headline says that US assessment is not responsible for Gaza blast. This firstly absolves Israel from any responsibility for the mass killing committed. The first bias we see is the media not holding Israel responsible for the mass killings they committed. Instead the article claims that it was a misfire by Islamic Jihad. Firstly this implies an orientalist discourse because it uses the terms Jihad and Islamic Arabs as well as implying that they are unorganized and terrorists because they bombed their own people by mistake. The first picture is of a man holding carpets and kids behind him in dirty clothes in a destroyed area by Israelis, this image further pushes orientalism by showcasing them “dirty”. The article should have posted a picture of the hospital bombing instead. The headline and article also has a Zionist approach as it doesn’t hold Israel responsible for its mass killings and uses the US as further justification on their title.

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First observation that gets the attention is the headline. In this newspaper we can detect bias in the word choice such as the word " conflict" used rather than " war" for example. This word choice can make it seem like both sides Israeli and Palestinian are equal and are both dealing with an ongoing issue but in reality it is a genocide that has been happening. So the language used is very important and changes the whole context according to King and Jégic (2004) that pointed out that by describing how language is a way of being bias and this is exactly what we analyze in this newspaper. In the Lede of this newspaper the attack is described as a "terror " attack. They could have said military or armed attack. but it was labeled as a terror attack. It is mentioned how most of the death are civilians ( 1400 Israelis) ignoring the fact that most Israeli men are army reservists. Describing the attack as a terror attack is anti- Palestinian discourse. Stating that " most of the deaths were civilians" , while it was not needed to be mentioned and it is not factual, is also anti Palestinian discourse because it solidifies the idea that they are terrorists that kill mostly civilians. So both saying terror attack and saying most casualties were civilians shows bias to the Israeli point of view. Also its mentioned how Israel gave the "permission" to provide funds ( water ect) It sounds as if Israel is providing for Palestinians in Gaza, while the fact is that it's depriving them of minimal human rights.

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to help you think about word choice

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Yocheved Lifshitz, a grandmother and Israeli peace activist, was kidnapped, beaten and held in tunnels built by Hamas for 17 days.

In harrowing detail, an 85-year-old Israeli grandmother described her 17-day ordeal as a hostage, offering for the first time a captive’s account of the armed Palestinian group Hamas’s subterranean garrison beneath Gaza, the conditions in which the group’s hostages are being held and the operatives deployed to tend to them.

The woman, Yocheved Lifshitz, a peace activist from Nir Oz, a kibbutz near the Gaza border, was released on Tuesday along with another woman, Nurit Cooper, 79, after negotiations between Israel and Hamas were facilitated by Egypt and Qatar. Only two other hostages out of at least 222 have been released since the Hamas rampage on Oct. 7 left over 1,400 people dead in Israel.

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The first thing we notice in this headline is the word choice. Using the Word “conflict” minimises the issue to something that is happening between two equal part, as if there was not an occupying force and an occupied population, just as Siddiqui and Zaheer describe in their article.

Furthermore, the article signals there have been “years of quiet” once again minimising the question of genocide and erasing 80 years of occupation, as if what is currently happening is not related to years of oppression, apartheid and genocide. In other words, this headline frames the current situation as something that was unexpected and unrelated to the right of resistance of Palestinians.

The article goes on to describe what they denominate a “little-noticed police action in Jerusalem”. With this, the author is further minimising the conflict and at the same time acknowledging the media bias that exists when reporting on Palestinians. Using “little-noticed” to describe the “action” implies that the coverage done on the acts of oppression suffered by Palestinians is minimum; talking about the actions undertaken against Palestinians is not directly covered by big media outlets. They have only started to go back to these events and report on them now, to try to find reasons for Hamas operation.

Furthermore, the author uses “police action” to describe an act of oppression and violation of human rights against Palestinians.

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In the headline, the journalist used the word “conflict” to describe the Israeli-Palestinian war. The word of choice in this case shows bias in headline such that the word “conflict” describes there is a small problem between Israelis and Palestinians happening currently instead of the genocide occurring. The way the headline is structured especially when asking “What’s the Israel-Palestinian conflict about” also shows bias such that the structure of the question and this specific part determines that the war happening has a specific reason that happened recently or is something planned for and not that it is a Palestinian right to resist and defend their land against the Israeli occupation. The lede of this article further shows bias is word choice where the journalist chose to describe the war between Israel and Hamas as a fight using the word “fighting”. This is what King and Jegić (2004) emphasized about in explaining about the usage of language as a method of reflecting bias. The journalist in addition used the terms “war and conflict” to reflect of the Palestinian situation. This word choice emphasizes that there was a war between Israel and Palestinians but the current situation is just a “conflict” between them. The term “destabilised” was also used in the lede to describe the result of the war on the Middle east countries. This portrays the Palestinians are the cause of the instability of Middle Eastern countries and not the anti-humanitarian genocide of the Israelis on Palestine especially the Gaza strip.

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According to CNN, Yocheved Lifshitz which is an 85-year-old Israeli hostage released on Monday by Hamas, described her ordeal after being kidnapped by gunmen and taken into a tunnel system in Gaza by saying "I went through hell".

However, if we dig deep into what was actually said, the hostage claimed that she, along with 25 other hostages, slept on mattresses and ate the same food that Hamas fighters had ate. Moreover, she said that they took care of sanitary side for them not to get sick and even took care of the feminine hygiene of the women. She added that they were very kind and generous.

Here, we come to point out how this headline was bias and anti-palestinian. If you read the headline, you let the picture of terrorism and violence stick to Hamas or the palestinians in general and neglect the right scenario of settler-colonialism.

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Instructions - Based on your own research, pick any example of news from the current war (and not already posted/analyzed here) and analyze  the headline and lede you found using concepts from the readings to analyze anti-Palestinian bias (be specific). Be sure to post a screen shot of the headline and lede (first paragraph). Here is an example post analyzing the news headline & lede prepared by instructor

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Instructions - Based on your own research, pick any example of news from the current war (and not already posted/analyzed here) and analyze  the headline and lede you found using concepts from the readings to analyze anti-Palestinian bias (be specific). Be sure to post a screen shot of the headline and lede (first paragraph). Here is an example post analyzing the news headline & lede prepared by instructor

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The word choice of "aims bombing" only suggests that Israel attempted to bomb, as opposed selecting wording that represents the non-stop Israeli bombing of Palestinians in Gaza ("Israel dropped more bombs in a week than US dropped in Afghanistan" according to some experts). The headline only identifies an area being bombed and omits the people. Had the victims of the bombing been included, the headline would have to mention most Palestinians in Gaza are refugees (more than 80% are refugees from other parts of Palestine). Note that Siddiqui and Zaheer showed Palestinian refugees are disappearing across headlines over 50 years. The lede of the article further omits Israel's responsibility for killing Palestinian civilians by only reporting "record numbers of Palestinians were killed" and not stating who killed them as well as not mentioning civilians. All of the above perpetuates the denial of Palestinian suffering as refugees murdered by Israel and this reproduces anti-Palestinian discourse that gives power to Israel to murder Palestinians with impunity and positions Palestinians as unworthy of being victims.