Will Western Mainstream Media Be Held Accountable for Their Role in Genocide?

The ruthlessness of the Israeli genocide machine in Palestine, and the direct complicity of the U.S., U.K., and other Western governments are two key pillars in the horrors being perpetrated against the Palestinian people (and in the attacks on human rights defenders around the globe).

But there is an essential third pillar: the role of complicit Western media corporations knowingly disseminating Israeli disinformation and propaganda, justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity, dehumanizing Palestinians, and blacking out information on the genocide in the West. From the perspective of international human rights law, such actions could and should be subject to sanctions. And there are historical precedents.

Seventy-six years ago, when delegates gathered at the newly established United Nations to draft a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the importance of protecting freedom of expression was front and center. They would declare that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

But, in the wake of a half-century of horrific atrocities, driven in significant part by the dehumanization of millions on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion, or other status, they were all too well aware that speech could also be used as a powerful weapon to destroy the rights of others, including the right to life itself. Thus, in the same document, the UN made clear that freedom of expression does not grant media corporations or anyone else a right “to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the other rights and freedoms.”

At the same time, in another UN conference room, delegates were gathered to create a new Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. There too, the drafters were aware of the danger of speech that dehumanizes and incites. The final convention would criminalize not just genocide, but also incitement to genocide and complicity in genocide- prohibitions that apply not only to states but to private actors as well.

The drafters of both instruments were aware of the conviction in the Nuremburg Tribunal just two years earlier of publisher Julius Streicher for incitement and “persecution on political and racial grounds.” The court found that Streicher’s media publication Der Sturmer continued to publish articles that included “incitement to murder and extermination” even while he was aware of the horrors that were being perpetrated against European Jews by Nazi Germany.

Fifty years later, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) would convict three media personalities for their role in inciting the Rwanda genocide. Two worked for the Mille Collines television and radio company and one for the Kangura newspaper. All three were found guilty of incitement to genocide (among other crimes). During sentencing, ICTR Judge Navi Pillay (now a commissioner on the UN’s international commission of enquiry investigating Israel’s crimes) admonished the perpetrators: “You were fully aware of the power of words, and you used the…medium of communication with the widest public reach to disseminate hatred and violence…Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians.”

Der Sturmer knew what they were doing. Mille Collines knew what they were doing. And, today, CNN, Fox, BBC, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal know what they are doing. This is not to say that these Western outlets are in every sense the modern equivalents Der Sturmer and Milles Collines (they are not). But, like these historic examples, they have recklessly crossed the boundaries of ethical journalism and, in some cases, may find themselves legally exposed as well.

In the face of the first live-streamed genocide in history unfolding on the screens of people from Boston to Botswana, it is simply not credible to suggest that Western media companies are not aware of the realities on the ground and of what they are doing to obscure them. They have indisputably made conscious choices to hide the genocide from their audiences, to systematically dehumanize the Palestinian victims, and to insulate the Israeli perpetrators from accountability.

In the wake of the findings of the World Court that charges of genocide are plausible, its ordering of provisional measures, the request of the ICC Prosecutor for arrest warrants, and the issuance of successive damning reports on Israel’s conduct by independent international human rights mechanisms, rather than reporting fully on these developments, Western media companies have suppressed information on them and doubled down on running cover for Israel.

Equally importantly, the target audience of these media companies is not limited to uninvolved bystanders. It includes as well Western government officials and policymakers directly complicit in the genocide, through the provision of military, economic, intelligence, and diplomatic support to Israel, as well as the voting public that enables this support. And it includes a significant number of dual Israeli nationals who shuttle back and forth to participate in the killing. The nexus between media incitement and harmful actions is more direct than these media companies might like to admit.

Indeed, if your only source of information is mainstream Western media, you may have no idea that Israel is on trial for genocide in the World Court or that Israel’s leaders are the subject of arrest warrant requests for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. It is likely that you have never heard the numerous statements of genocidal intent by the Israeli President, Prime Minister, cabinet ministers, and military commanders.

You will likely still believe the stories of beheaded Israeli babies (long proven to be fabricated) and be unaware of the many Palestinian babies who actually have been beheaded. You will almost certainly not know of the systematic killing of Palestinian civilians, children, infants, women, older persons, persons with disabilities, and others. You will be unaware of the torture camps, the systematic rape of detainees, and the Israeli snipers targeting small children in Gaza. And you may not even know that Israel now holds the world records for the murder of journalists, of aid workers, of UN officials, and of healthcare workers.

Instead, transparently false Israeli disinformation and propaganda are regularly and uncritically published in Western media to justify war crimes, dehumanize Palestinians, and distract the public from the daily atrocities committed in Israel’s campaign of extermination. Stories covering the genocide are censored. The voices of Palestinians and human rights defenders are suppressed.

Reporters are instructed not to mention “occupied territory”, “Palestinians”, or “refugee camps.” Those Palestinian civilian victims who are not erased entirely are reduced to “collateral damage” or “human shields” at best, or “terrorists” at worst. In massacre after massacre, Palestinians in headlines are not killed by Israel, they simply “die.”

In the rule book of Western corporate media, there is no genocide, only a war of self-defense. And history started on October 7. Absent is any coverage of the context of 76 years of ethnic cleansing, persecution, mass imprisonment, gross violations of human rights and apartheid.

In sum, western media companies have made themselves a part of the mechanism of genocide in Palestine. Absent real accountability, these influential actors will continue to abuse their power, thereby trampling on the human rights of any people who fall on the wrong side of the line between those supported by these companies, and those who they choose to denigrate and dehumanize.

Of course, defenders of Palestinian human rights in the West who oppose Israeli genocide and apartheid know better than anyone how important it is to preserve the right to free speech. No group in modern history has faced more official and corporate silencing or had its speech more criminalized by Western governments. Speech restrictions are never imposed on those with the most power, but always target those most despised by power. This is the time to buttress free speech protections, not to erode them.

But free speech guarantees do not protect incitement to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Those acts can and must be subject to criminal accountability. Both defamation and incitement can also bring accountability in civil courts. Action in international tribunals for Israel’s crimes against humanity and genocide in Palestine has already begun, and more is certain to follow. It is not inconceivable that, just as in the cases of the Nuremburg and Rwanda tribunals, some media companies or individuals might face real legal accountability in the months and years to come.

Regardless of what happens in the halls of justice, it is certain that these media outlets will eventually be held accountable in the court of public opinion. For defenders of human rights and people everywhere who care about holding power to account, this process is urgent. And, in fact, it has already begun. The cresting wave of public criticism of the blatant bias demonstrated by Western media during this genocide has forced some companies to begin to adjust their reporting, however slightly. This proves that change can happen if agents of change are mobilized. There is strength in speaking out, in supporting independent media, and in the boycott. As a first step, all those who care should unsubscribe from these outlets, both print and broadcast, switch to independent media sources, and encourage others to do the same.

To again quote Judge Pillay in the Rwanda decision: “The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility. Those who control such media are accountable for its consequences”. The task of ensuring that accountability falls, ultimately, on all of us.