If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
– Malcolm X
Bearing witness is a crucial marker of a responsible press and media. It brings to light the unnecessary suffering and hardship of those rendered voiceless and disposable, as well as the underlying forces that produce such conditions. It also serves to challenge those who “wallow in willful ignorance.”[1] Shattering the lies concealed by claims of innocence is a powerful weapon for holding power accountable, making it visible and subject to exposure and resistance. Bearing witness does not guarantee justice, but it provides the awareness necessary to turn propaganda against itself and mobilize people to function as a collective force of resistance.
The corporate media undermines moral witnessing by often prioritizing the discredited notion of balance over the more crucial goal of seeking truth in the service of accountability and democracy. This retreat from holding power accountable not only discredits the pursuit of truth in the service of justice and the strengthening of democracy but also tends to fall prey to the seductions of corruption, political theater and entertainment.[2]
The dialectic within journalism encompasses what could be termed, on one hand, a politics of erasure and distortion, and on the other, a politics of moral witnessing. The politics of erasure is apparent in how corporate mainstream media disproportionately covers Israel’s aggressive actions in Gaza and portrays Trump as a conventional political candidate rather than an authoritarian threat to democracy both domestically and internationally. This erasure is also evident in how far-right journalism consistently distorts the truth when reporting on issues that conflict with reactionary conservative politics.
Conversely, the pursuit of truth and moral witnessing is exemplified by journalists from sources such as The Intercept, CounterPunch, Truthout, LA Progressive, and other alternative media platforms. These journalists engage deeply with critical social issues and consistently hold power accountable. Despite their commitment to journalistic integrity, these outlets are often marginalized within the media landscape dominated by corporate control.[3]
In what follows, I will comment briefly on how these two modes of journalism operate. First, I will briefly focus on the reporting of Scahill and Grim in The Intercept, which exposed how The New York Times and several other major newspapers underplayed the despair, suffering, and death that Israel is brutally imposing on Palestinians. On the other hand, I will examine how corporate-controlled media failed to address historically, contextually, and critically both Trump’s delusional ramblings and his clear and dangerous threats to democracy.
Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim reported in The Intercept that an internal memo from the New York Times “instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land…The memo also instructed] reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars.”[4]
Scahill and Grim also note that major newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times“reserved terms like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks.”[5]
This is more than mere style guidelines; it is censorship in service of partisan reporting and moral irresponsibility. Instances of war crimes, the horror of genocide, and the reality of Israel’s violence against Palestinians are being distorted and erased. Critical of the babble of balance, Scahill and Grim highlight the importance of reporting on Israel’s savage war against Palestinians while making clear that the mainstream press represses such reporting, enabling the slaughter to continue.
Rather than “hating the people who are oppressed,” CounterPunch is another truth-seeking media source that has covered the war on Gaza in great detail, providing both personal accounts of the suffering while placing the conflict in a broader history and political narrative.
The punishing state now wraps itself in censorship, propaganda, and cruel invective parading as a mix between political theater and both sides journalism.
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar
in Critical Pedagogy.
Source: CounterPunch
