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A maze of tunnels extends below the Gaza Strip, allowing Hamas fighters to stay out of sight and smuggle weapons and goods.

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A journalist watches as the sun sets over the Gaza Strip off a position across the border in southern Israel on Nov. 8 amid ongoing battles between Israel and Hamas. (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)
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More than 750 journalists from dozens of news organizations have signed an open letter published Thursday condemning Israel's killing of reporters in Gaza and criticizing Western media's coverage of the war.

The letter - which said newsrooms are "accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians" - is the latest in a string of impassioned collective statements staking out ground in the stateside reaction to the Israel-Gaza war.

But while other writers, artists, scholars and academics have criticized media coverage of the conflict, the latest letter - which includes signatories from Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and The Washington Post - is notable for exposing divisions and frustrations within newsrooms.

For some of the journalists, signing the letter was a daring or even risky move. Reporters have been fired from some newsrooms for espousing public political stances that could open them to accusations of bias.

But those who organized the newest letter argue that it is a call to recommit to fairness, not abandon it.

"My hope for this letter is to push back on the culture of fear around this issue," said Abdallah Fayyad, a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist and former editorial board member at the Boston Globe, who signed the letter, "and to make decision-makers and reporters and editors think twice about the language that they use."

"What it comes down to is just asking journalists to do their jobs," said Suhauna Hussain, a labor reporter at the Los Angeles Times who signed the letter. "To hold power to account."

Most strikingly, the letter argues that journalists should use words like "apartheid," "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" to describe Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

While the letter-signers maintain these are "precise terms that are well-defined by international human rights organizations," there have historically been debates among diplomats, aid groups and participants over when a particular incident or conflict fits the definition of those terms.

Fayyad said he wasn't calling on newsrooms to adopt those terms for their own descriptions, "but it is a relevant fact to say that leading human rights groups have called Israel an apartheid regime," he said, just as many news stories note that the U.S. has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. "That's the kind of double standard I hope this letter will call out."

The media navigates a war of words for reporting on Gaza and Israel

Much of the text focuses on the journalists who have been killed in the month-long conflict that erupted after Hamas militants crossed the Israeli border on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,400 people and taking about 240 hostage.

So far, 39 media workers have been killed, mostly in retaliatory strikes by Israel, according to the latest tally from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

An investigation by Reporters Without Borders determined that Israel targeted journalists in Oct. 13 airstrikes that killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and wounded six others. (Israeli officials have denied that they target journalists and said they are reviewing the incident.) In late October, Israeli military officials advised Reuters and Agence France-Presse that it could not guarantee the safety of their employees operating in the Gaza Strip.

Joe Rivano Barros, an editor at San Francisco nonprofit Mission Local who signed the letter, maintained that there has not been "widespread condemnations of [the killings of journalists] from Western newsrooms."

"This particular conflict seems to bring in a lot of prevarication in a way that other conflicts don't," Rivano Barros said.

The journalists' letter follows several other open letters in recent weeks, most expressing solidarity with Palestinians. The New York Review of Books published one signed by well-known writers including Ta-Nehisi Coates calling on the "international community to commit to ending the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza." A letter signed by hundreds of Jewish writers that was published in N+1 magazine said, "we are horrified to see the fight against antisemitism weaponized as a pretext for war crimes with stated genocidal intent."

A letter published by Artforum and signed by thousands of artists and academics, though, led to the firing of its editor. The magazine's publishers said in a statement that the letter was "not consistent with Artforum's editorial process" and had been "widely misinterpreted as a statement from the magazine about highly sensitive and complex geopolitical circumstances."

And a widely circulated letter titled " Writers Against the War on Gaza," which has been signed by more than 8,000 writers, condemned "the silencing of dissent and ... racist and revisionist media cycles." New York Times writers, Jazmine Hughes and Jamie Lauren Keiles, signed the letter. Days later, Hughes quit under pressure from management and Keiles left the paper, writing on social media that his was "a personal decision about what kind of work I want to be able to do."

Open letters have a long history in civil protest, playing a strategic role, said T.V. Reed, professor of English and American studies at Washington State University who has studied protest movements and wrote the book "The Art of Protest."

"The power [of open letters] is in offering readers names they know and respect to identify with. And/or professions they respect and identify with," he said. "In this era of social media, where individual commentary is often excessive and harsh, a collective letter thoughtfully conceived can be more powerful."

The journalist-signed letter raised concerns for journalism scholars and veteran news editors.

Bill Grueskin, a Columbia University journalism professor, said reporters may have more latitude to weigh in on media-related matters like the killing of journalists. But he warned that journalists who sign open letters on political topics risk damaging their outlets and their own ability to gather information.

"I think it's worth having a real honest discussion in terms of the reputation of the institution they work for," said Grueskin, a former deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Rivano Barros argued that journalists "can and do criticize governments when they are infringing on press freedoms," such as the Saudi government for the murder of writer Jamal Khashoggi and the Russian government for detaining Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

"Gazan journalists are facing an unprecedented and rising death toll, Western newsrooms are directly benefiting from their work on-the-ground, and if we cannot call for their protection - that is perverse," he said.

Steve Coll, a former managing editor at The Post and former dean of the Columbia journalism school, said that journalists who sign open letters could face backlash from management, especially if those newsrooms have rules against activism.

He noted a recent generational split in some newsrooms, where younger employees feel empowered to speak out on political issues - putting them in conflict sometimes with the mores of older journalists, who prefer to stay quiet. "It's a problem that has to be resolved one way or another," he said.
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Hundreds of journalists sign letter protesting coverage of Israel

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The letter exposes divisions and frustrations within U.S. newsrooms about how they are covering the Israel-Gaza war.

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Palestinian families seeking refuge in makeshift tents in vacant areas in Rafah, Gaza Strip. Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images

More recently, two articles in respected U.S. newspapers highlight the debate over bias.

A Feb. 2, 2024, op-ed in The Wall Street Journal described a Michigan city, where many Arab immigrants live, as a center of antisemitic terrorism sympathizers. On the same day, another op-ed in The New York Times depicted the U.S. as a lion engaged in combat with Iran - characterized as a "parasitoid wasp" - and Hamas - portrayed as a "trap-door spider," executing rapid, predatory maneuvers. The pieces were attacked by critics as being Islamaphobic and falling back on racist tropes.

Broadcast media is similarly being scrutinized for bias. According to the Guardian, CNN has faced scrutiny for its alleged pro-Israel bias, with claims that Israeli official statements receive expedited clearance and trustful on-air portrayal. Conversely, statements from Palestinians, including those not affiliated with Hamas, are frequently delayed or remain unreported. A notable instance cited by the Guardian involved former Israeli intelligence official Rami Igra asserting on CNN that the entire Palestinian population of Gaza could be considered combatants, a statement allowed to go unchallenged.

From the other side, Jonathan Greenbatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, has accused U.S. media of a bias that dehumanizes Israelis while sanitizing Hamas. During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" in October 2023, he raised concerns over the networks framing of Hamas, asking, " Who's writing the scipts?"

The issue of bias isn't confined to the U.S. In the U.K.,the state-funded BBC has received complaints on its Gaza coverage from both sides as well.

With accusation of bias being levied by both sides in the conflict, what does academic research say about newsroom prejudice?

Support for the assertion of anti-Israeli bias in media occasionally emerges in research. A 2016 study uncovered anti-Israeli bias in German and British newspapers, although results for U.S. publications were mixed. However, when scholars look at media coverage data as a whole, rather than pick and choose, they demonstrate that leading U.S. outlets tend to be more sympathetic toward the Israeli perspective than that of Palestinians.

As a scholar of media bias and the Arab world, in my own research, I have found that anti-Palestinian bias in the U.S. and other countries' media is often subtle, albeit in plain view.

Measuring bias

Additionally, scholars examine the sources cited and the prominence given to different voices. Historical context, the overall tone and language, how often the media talks about suffering on one side compared with the other - all are indicators used to analyze media bias.

Historical bias in language and reporting

Several studies scrutinizing U.S. media coverage during the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, spanning from 1987 to 1993, consistently revealed pronounced biases.

The analyses indicated a propensity to emphasize Israeli deaths despite higher Palestinian casualties. The media's reliance on Israeli sources shaped the narrative, omitting crucial context such as the illegality of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands under peace agreements. Overlooking this fact obscured the correlation between increasing settlements and a rise in Palestinian attacks, thus compromising a comprehensive understanding.

Throughout the second intifada from 2000 to 2005, the prevalence of bias in media coverage persisted.

A study conducted by the independent media watchdog FAIR highlighted a notable instance concerning NPR's reporting during the initial six months of 2001. While NPR initially presented similar figures of Israeli and Palestinian deaths - 62 versus 51 - FAIR's comprehensive analysis revealed a stark disparity. When considering the total six-month death toll of 77 versus 148, NPR reported on eight out of 10 Israeli deaths but only three out of 10 Palestinian deaths, creating a skewed impression of balance.

NPR's ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, responded to this assessment saying that numerical equivalence doesn't always equate to journalistic fairness.

Selective coverage

Echoing this perspective, media studies scholar Mohamad Elmasry argued in 2009 that the U.S. media rationalizes Israeli violence as a reluctantly understandable aspect of war, framing Israel's actions as " retaliatory and legitimate" while depicting Palestinian violence as " barbaric and senseless."

"Rarely, however, is the history of how these people became refugees incorporated into the reporting," and neither is the body of international law and consensus on their rights, states journalism scholar Marda Dunsky, who conducted the analysis. An analysis of 30 major U.S. print and broadcast outlets over four years - from 2000 to 2004 - found that the coverage lacked this important context during the second intifada.

AI confirms anti-Palestinian bias

Recently, experts have started to study big data on the media portrayals of the conflict with the help of artificial intelligence. For example, in 2023, MIT's Holly Jackson conducted a study of 33,000 news articles from 1987-1993 and 2000-2005 - that cover the two intifadas - with the help of state-of-the-art AI technology that provides large-scale historical data.

Jackson confirmed that there was anti-Palestinian bias that persisted during the first and second intifadas. The discernible bias was manifested in the level of objectivity and the tone of language employed by outlets such as The New York Times. The bias was further underscored by the manner in which media outlets attributed sentiments of violence to either side involved in the conflict.

For instance, an article highlighted that "They [Jews] threw rocks at hotels housing Arabs, who hurled objects from their windows in return." Notably, the article employs the more neutral verb "throw" to portray Israeli violence and the less neutral verb "hurl" to describe Palestinian violence. Journalists sometimes use synonyms; however, the cumulative effect of repeatedly using more negative synonyms for Palestinians and more positive ones for Israelis implies the existence of bias, Jackson noted.

Jackson's findings revealed a significant disparity, with more than 90% of articles focusing on Israelis compared with less than 50% covering Palestinians. Additionally, the articles used negative language and the passive voice to refer to Palestinians twice as often as Israelis. For example, she reveals that the passive construction "killed" is used in "Palestinian killed as clashes erupt with troops" to avoid specifying the perpetrators of the violence, contrasting with the active "slay" in "Palestinians slay 2 Israeli hikers," used to emphasize the perpetrators.

The anti-Palestinian sentiment increased from the first intifada to the second, the same study showed. As an illustration, Palestinian deaths surged from 1,422 to 4,916, a stark increase of three and a half times. They were also four and a half times greater than the 1,100 Israeli casualties. Yet, their reporting failed to correspond proportionately to the heightened occurrences.

How the media reports on events can greatly influence public perceptions of what is really going on. Reporting can prime audiences to see a Palestinian fighter in a mask as either an icon of terrorism or a hero resisting occupation, depending on how the news is presented.

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Bias hiding in plain sight: Decades of analyses suggest US media skews anti-Palestinian

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How the media talks about suffering on one side compared with the other can often reveal bias in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict coverage, writes a scholar of media bias and the Arab world.