Mar 22, 2024

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

A new poll by the Pew Research Center has found that half of Americans have no idea whether more Israelis or Palestinians have died in the so-called “Israel-Hamas war”.

“Most Americans report having strong emotional reactions to the Israel-Hamas war,” the Pew Research Center writes. “Yet, for the most part, Americans are not paying very close attention to news about the conflict. One sign of this limited attention is that only about half of U.S. adults can correctly answer a question that tests their factual knowledge by asking whether the number of deaths in the war, so far, is higher among Palestinians or among Israelis.”

The answer of course is that many, many times more Palestinians have died since October 7 than Israelis. There were reportedly 1,163 Israeli deaths on October 7 with the IDF claiming to have lost 246 troops in the ground offensive thereafter, while the Gaza Health Ministry says Palestinian deaths in Gaza are nearing 32,000 (arguably a massive underestimate).

But the Pew Research Center is wrong to blame widespread American ignorance of these numbers solely on a lack of attention. The real culprit is the journalistic malpractice of the mass media.

The fact that half of Americans don’t know whether Israelis or Palestinians are suffering more deaths in Gaza is the result of the appalling “Palestinian child walks into bullet”-style headlines the mainstream American press have been churning out since this conflict began.

Plenty of Americans are unfamiliar with the specific details of foreign conflicts their country is involved with, but because most of them encounter headlines and bits of information in their day to day lives there is a general awareness about things like the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine, or that 9/11 happened, or that the US went to war with Iraq amid claims of weapons of mass destruction.

But because the Israeli assault on Gaza is backed by the western empire, the headlines in the western press are a lot less clear about exactly what’s happening there. In a new article for Declassified UK titled “How the Western Media Helped Build the Case for Genocide in Gaza”, Jonathan Cook lays out numerous instances in which the mainstream press have brazenly misrepresented reality about facts on the ground in Gaza in their headlines, like saying “food aid-related deaths” to describe an IDF massacre of Palestinian civilians waiting for food, or describing civilians being deliberately starved by Israel in ways that suggest they’re just suffering from a natural famine.

In a society where only 20 percent of news consumers ever read past the headline, mass media propagandists know they can get away with a tremendous amount of manipulation of public consciousness by simply phrasing headlines in a way that advances the information interests of the US-centralized empire. If the mainstream press had been correctly informing the public that Israel is killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and intentionally starving hundreds of thousands more, there would be no confusion among the American public about whether Israelis or Palestinians have been suffering more deaths since October.

American movies and TV shows like to make fun of nations like North Korea for having state propaganda, but Americans are easily the most propagandized population on earth. The propaganda of the mainstream press is so effective because Americans don’t know it’s propaganda, so they consume it without any distrust or skepticism.

That’s just what’s necessary to manufacture consent for the actions of the globe-spanning empire which revolves around the United States. There is too much power riding on the behavior of the US government for the American people to be permitted any real say in it, so their opinions and understanding are manipulated throughout their entire lives by state propaganda services disguised as news.

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