pdotb quoted When Genocide Wasn’t News by Martin Lukacs
Content warning Gaza, genocide, canpol
All the Canadian newspapers were strikingly similar in making systematic editorial choices about their language, using highly emotive terms for Israeli deaths that are likely to evoke sympathy and indignation, while not using the same language for Palestinian deaths.
In the sentences analyzed, The Globe and Mail used the term “slaughter” 27 times to describe Israeli deaths, Toronto Star 28 times, and National Post 89 times—usually as a factual journalistic description. The newspapers described Palestinian deaths that way zero times.
The newspapers also used the term “massacre” hundreds of times to describe Israeli deaths, almost always as factual journalistic description—with National Post using it the most often, 203 times.
Palestinians were never described as being massacred, but each newspaper quoted individuals, usually Hamas spokespeople, referring to a “massacre” on 19 occasions each.
The newspapers have refused to use such terms to describe Israeli bombings in Gaza, despite Palestinians being killed in droves by attacks on schools, residential buildings, refugee camps, mosques, and public markets.
— When Genocide Wasn’t News by Martin Lukacs, Dania Majid, Jason Toney (8%)
