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The news media’s coverage after October 7, 2003, defended and legitimized Israel’s destruction of Gaza and killing of tens of thousands of civilians, says journalist Adam Johnson. In his new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, Johnson details how outlets such as The New York Times and CNN often used terms like “massacre” and “barbaric” to describe the initial Hamas attack but would not use similar language to describe Israeli military offenses that killed hundreds of people in Gaza. The news media, Johnson argues, also wrongly portrayed President Biden as powerless to restrain Israel. Johnson argues that the mainstream news media played a powerful role in making liberal Americans who usually care deeply about human rights less concerned about the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians.
