New York Times promoted the UN’s precise numbers this summer. Other news sources hedged with “more than 1,000” killed, while influencers on social media simply printed the bumper stickers…
Missing from any of these information sources, however, are photographs or videos of the killings, documentary records of any kind, or any independent confirmation of the UN’s claims besides a handful of (unverified) first-person anecdotes. In a typical example, USA Today and its local-news affiliates linked a “gallery” of 22 photographs to a 4 August wire story about aid-site killings in Gaza, not one of which includes a dead person, let alone evidence of a larger atrocity. The slide-show makes clear that cameras do exist in Gaza, but we are invited to believe that not a single phone or other image-recording device documented even one of 1,400 killings that by then had allegedly taken place near crowded food-delivery locations and access routes over the course of more than two months.
In late July, a self-described “eyewitness” finally emerged—a former US Army green beret named Anthony Aguilar, who had been dismissed as a security contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. News organisations (including the BBC and PBS), websites, and numerous podcasts carried interviews with Aguilar in which he was described as a “whistleblower” and permitted to allege “barbaric” tactics and “war crimes” on the part of US security contractors and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Nobody seemed to mind that the accompanying footage from Aguilar’s body camera showed not a single killing. Aguilar’s most heart-rending story—in which he claimed to have been kissed by a grateful Palestinian boy whose killing he then witnessed—was later found to have been fabricated in every detail. The boy was never shot and remains alive. At the time of writing—four days after Aguilar’s claims had been fully discredited in early September—neither the BBC nor PBS had amended their earlier coverage.
This is, to put it mildly, something of a disgrace – though this does seem to be the level of reporting we're now getting from Gaza.
Disproportionate responsibility for this growing detachment from reality falls on the practice of journalism, or lack thereof. Whether it’s a once-in-a-generation military atrocity, a brazen smear by the OHCHR and its allies, or a nuanced example of war’s tragedies, the Gaza food-aid story is not only a big story but also a reportable story. Yet it is not being reported. Truth is not being sought by those who were, until recently, entrusted to do so. Gaza is challenging terrain for journalists, but Geneva is not. Reporters could begin by asking the United Nations OHCHR to open its books and provide a detailed justification for what it meant by “reportedly.”
Disappearing journalism is not the only problem. Academic experts increasingly avert their eyes as well, either because they have succumbed to alternative realities themselves or simply because they fear the professional and social risks of offering basic reality checks on tribalised topics. An expert might observe, for example, that even the worst militaries learn from mistakes and adjust, which makes the rising curve of supposed butchery by the highly competent IDF around aid sites farcically implausible. The UN’s estimate of the killings rose from 798 dead on 11 July to 1,373 on 31 July to 2,146 on 4 September, as already noted.
The writer here bemoans the collapse in journalistic standards, what it says about the media now, and what it means for our society in general. Important issues, no doubt, but I can't help wondering if this is something that happens in particular when the reporting is from Gaza, and when one particular country, the Jewish state, is involved.
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