{"id":317891,"date":"2025-11-04T07:57:40","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T07:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=317891"},"modified":"2025-11-06T07:35:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T07:35:49","slug":"how-the-media-normally-report-on-a-mass-atrocity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=317891","title":{"rendered":"How the Media Normally Report On A Mass Atrocity"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Caitlin Johnstone \u2013 Caitlin\u2019s Newletter Nov 3, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8K_n1fJ8BMA?si=rCGsyzDUrrCPWpQa\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/8K_n1fJ8BMA\">Video Link<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Washington Post has published an article titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/3XSB9\">Families shot down, held at ransom as they flee Darfur\u2019s killing fields<\/a>,\u201d subtitled \u201cSudan\u2019s RSF paramilitary and its allies have carried out mass ethnic killings and hostage taking in the captured city of El Fashir, survivors told The Post.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The article opens with a paragraph humanizing the victims of the El Fashir massacres: \u201cFamilies gunned down as they huddled for safety. Young children weeping over their mother\u2019s body in the desert. Doctors seized for ransom and executed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It names the perpetrators, \u201cthe paramilitary Rapid Support Forces,\u201d in the second paragraph.<\/p>\n<p>It names the backers of the perpetrators in the third paragraph, saying that \u201cThe RSF is backed by the United Arab Emirates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It mentions the word \u201cgenocide\u201d three separate times. \u201cEthnic killings\u201d appears twice. The UAE is named repeatedly; even the fact that it is \u201ca key U.S. ally\u201d is explicitly highlighted.<\/p>\n<p>Do you notice anything strange about this reporting?<\/p>\n<p>Me neither. What stands out, reading this article here in the year 2025, is how completely and utterly normal it is.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">This is how the media normally covers a mass atrocity as terrible as this. This is how they would have been covering Gaza this whole time if the entire western establishment wasn&#8217;t aggressively protecting Israel. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/tiAQobvIyj\">pic.twitter.com\/tiAQobvIyj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/caitoz\/status\/1985129927579255097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 2, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>It\u2019s not fantastic or extraordinary journalism, it\u2019s just normal for a mainstream western publication. The reporters talk to the victims, describe the massacres they were told about, explain the various power dynamics at play from a mainstream western perspective, name some US officials who are pushing for a halt to the RSF\u2019s atrocities, and use appropriately strong language to describe the horrors they are documenting\u200a\u2014\u200aincluding in the headline.<\/p>\n<p>They do all the normal mainstream news reporter things. They cover a depraved mass atrocity the same way they\u2019ve typically covered such things for generations.<\/p>\n<p>None of this would stand out on its own, if we hadn\u2019t spent two years watching the mainstream western press <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/world\/israel-gaza-genocide-media-coverage\/\">do absolutely none of these normal journalistic things<\/a> in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>The passive-language \u201cGazans perish in explosion\u201d headlines. The contortions to avoid naming the perpetrator and the governments that are backing its atrocities. The adamant refusal to use the word \u201cgenocide\u201d except to frame it as a dubious claim being made by another party which Israel forcefully denies. The <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/677Xq\">wildly biased discrepancy<\/a> between the strength of language used to describe violence inflicted by Israelis versus violence inflicted by Palestinians.<\/p>\n<p>If the western press had not been aggressively protecting Israel and its interests this whole time, all their reporting on Gaza over the last two years would have looked very much like the reporting we\u2019re seeing on the genocide in Sudan. There\u2019s a discrepancy in the reporting because there\u2019s a discrepancy in the propaganda needs of the western empire.<\/p>\n<p>It is good that the western press are doing actual journalism in Sudan and covering that genocide with the normal level of urgency and emphasis. If they had been reporting on Gaza in the same way these last two years, the west\u2019s support for Israel would have completely collapsed by now.<\/p>\n<p>Which is exactly why they haven\u2019t been doing it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/p\/how-the-media-normally-report-on\">Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Caitlin Johnstone on how the Western mainstream media is helping to cover Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza, literally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":317893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=317891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317892,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317891\/revisions\/317892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/317893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=317891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=317891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=317891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}