In Australia, the mainstream media’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has persistently been criticised for prioritising Israeli narratives, lacking historical context and using terms that obscure the scale of Palestinan civilian casualties.
Regrettably, much of the mainstream media’s coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran has also been afflicted by a range of shortcomings. These include:
– a failure to hold the government to account
– using Orwellian euphemisms to hide ugly truths
– distorting the facts, and
– ignoring the historic record.
While the ABC, SBS and The Guardian offer some respite in this regard, their coverage is certainly not immune from some of the deficiencies listed above.
The focus here is on bias in the mainstream media rather than the prevalence of misinformation and fake news in social media.
Examples of the mainstrean media’s shortcomings include the following:
Failure to hold the government to account
The attack on Iran is clearly a violation of the UN Charter and international criminal law. Furthermore, failure to strenuously object to such violations by the US and Israel only contributes to the demise of the ‘rules based international order’ which the Albanese Labor government is apparently keen to preserve. With very few exceptions, the mainstream media has failed to hold the government to account on both these matters.
Following the latest US-Israeli attack on Iran on 28th February, the Albanese government immediately declared its support for this military aggression, apparently the first US ally to do so.
In a joint announcement with Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared that “(w)e support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.”
This joint announcement also cited antisemitic incidents in Melbourne and Sydney in 2024, allegedly orchestrated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which the government has now designated a terrorist organisation. Senior police, however, have conceded that there is no evidence to support this allegation.
The government’s justification for the US-Israeli aggression is demonstrably flawed. The assault on Iran is clearly a violation of the ban on the use of force under the UN Charter and international law which has been the cornerstone of the international order since 1945.
One may oppose the oppressive Iranian regime and many of its policies and activities, but that does not justify an armed attack on its leadership, defence facilities and critical infrastructure.
Australia should be pushing the Trump administration to respect international law.
As Prof. Ben Saul, UN Special Rapporteur, has said: “When countries like Australia roll over and support this kind of illegal aggression, that’s the worst thing, in terms of contributing to the erosion of international law.”
While many academics and human rights advocates have unreservedly condemned the US-Israeli aggression, the mainstream media have failed to hold the government to account with any vigour.
They have also failed to expose how the government’s support for the US-Israeli aggression is totally inconsistent with its previous declarations on needing to preserve the ‘rules-based international order’, together with the fact that it makes Australia complicit in the collapse of this international order.
Note that the ‘rules-based international order’ needs to be distinguished from the ‘UN based international order’. The US opposes the later while supporting the former. This is because the US predominantly sets the rules in the ‘rules-based international order’ but doesn’t do so with respect to the ‘UN based international order’. Any mention of this distinction is extremely rare within the mainstream media.
According to the Trump administration, the UN based order is rejected because the UN is said to be out of control and ineffective i.e. it does too many things the US doesn’t agree with. In particular, the UN has policies like the UN Charter which the US flatly rejects.
A core principle of the UN Charter is the prohibition on the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, accept under specific conditions that are relevant. Successive US presidents, including Trump, have violated this principle and have refused to be bound by it, hence the rejection of a UN based order.
Regrettably, the Albanese Labor government has been an uncritical defender of the ‘rules-based international order’, now arguably in tatters primarily as a result of the Trump administration’s repeated threats and use of force, including its latest illegal attack, together with Israel, on Iran.
Orwellian euphemisms
Meanwhile, the mainstream media compounds its flawed reporting with Orwellian language that is designed to hide ugly truths.
Prevalent is the use of the term “take out” to mean “kill” or “assassinate”. This term has been regularly used to replace “kill” to describe what Israeli missiles have done to Iranian leaders.
Similarly “decapitate” is used instead of “assassinate.” It literally means “cut off the head,” but those engaging with the mainstream media surely aren’t imagining a guillotine in action, but something more akin to a reshuffle of senior personnel at a workplace.
The fact that Israel has regularly assassinated its detractors in the Middle East for decades hardly warrants a mention or condemnation. The US is also guilty of this crime under international humanitarian law.
“Boots on the ground” is yet another euphemism. The expression conjures up a casual bushwalk in the Blue Mountains, when it potentially means, in the current context, an illegal invasion by American (and possibly Israeli) ground forces equipped with lethal weapons.
Distorting the facts
In addition, as the war is inevitably spreading to Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere, the mainstream media continue to call certain armed groups in the region “proxies” of Iran, implying that they are Tehran’s puppets. This distortion is regularly repeated almost without exception.
For example, one doesn’t have to be an uncritical supporter of Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen to recognise that they emerged in response to crises in their own countries and continue to pursue their own agendas.
Hezbollah emerged in 1982 during the Lebanese Civil War as a Shiite resistance group, formed to oppose the devastating Israeli invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon. Its ongoing activities are a predictable response to the regional policies and state terrorism regularly carried out by Israel the U.S.
The Houthi movement emerged in northern Yemen in the 1990s as a Zaydi Shia revivalist movement against marginalisation and rising Saudi influence. Prof. Sarah Phillips, a leading expert on the Yemeni conflict, has argued that this conflict is deeply rooted in regional dynamics, including the genocide in Gaza, rather than solely being a proxy battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
As well, she argues that the Houthis have already survived years of airstrikes by a Saudi-led and US-UK backed coalition and that further airstrikes are unlikely to significantly degrade their military capability or dislodge them from power.
It is easier to demonise the Iranian regime by insinuating that it alone is responsible for all the violence in the region. However, constantly describing Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen as Iranian “proxies” is a distortion of the truth.
Ignoring the historic record
The mainstream media is either ignoring or distorting the historical record, especially with respect to Iran’s nuclear program.
The former Iran nuclear deal signed in July 2015, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was a landmark agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, UK, US – plus Germany) that capped Iran’s uranium enrichment program and allowed compliance inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to take place in exchange for sanctions relief.
Iran adhered to this agreement. Trump, however, tore it up in his first term. Subsequently, this created uncertainty around Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium, despite Iran’s willingness to renegotiate a deal with Trump on its nuclear program.
Reference to the effectiveness of this former agreement and its history is virtually non-existent in the mainstream media.
As it turned out, recent negotiations between the US and Iran over the latter’s nuclear program were a calculated ruse on the part of the Trump administration which enabled it to assemble a massive naval armada in the Middle East in order to attack Iran.
Searching for the truth
The above are only a few examples of the shortcomings afflicting the mainstream media’s coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Finding dependable information on the conflict is a constant challenge. It requires a search for more independent and critical investigations produced, for example, by academic specialists, human rights advocates and lesser-known online news podcasts and platforms that have a genuine commitment to negotiation, peace and justice.