Corporate media of all stripes have rushed to support the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran, throwing objectivity and accuracy by the wayside in order to manufacture consent for regime change.
On February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, bombing cities across the country, assassinating its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and openly stating their goal was overthrowing the government.
Despite this, media have gone out of their way to present the actions as the U.S. protecting itself, describing them as "defensive strikes," and to frame Iran as the aggressor. "Iran chooses chaos" ran the headline of the New York Times' newsletter, portraying the Islamic Republic as the primary actor.
The Free Press used similarly Orwellian concepts. "War is Iranians' best chance at peace," presenting U.S./Israeli crimes as an act of mercy on its long-suffering population.
Meanwhile, under the new leadership of self-described "Zionist fanatic" Bari Weiss, CBS News has transformed itself into a mouthpiece for the Israeli Defense Forces, interviewing IDF Brigadier General Effie Defrin, and uncritically presenting Israel's war as "aimed at preventing a wider global threat."
Across the West, corporate media have employed the same tactics of using the passive voice and not naming the perpetrator when describing U.S./Israeli aggression. A perfect encapsulation of this was the BBC's headline, "At least 153 dead after reported strike on school, Iran says," that made it sound as if the children died in a lightning strike or a labor dispute, rather than that they were bombed by hostile foreign powers.
Israeli casualties were given more sympathetic coverage than their Iranian counterparts, while media regularly toned down the language used to describe Israeli actions to make them sound more reasonable, and did the opposite with Iran. The Washington Post, for example, wrote(emphasis added) "Israel urges evacuation of south Beirut suburbs; Iran threatens revenge on U.S. over warship." Thus, Israel was treated as making a good faith attempt to reduce civilian casualties, while the Iranian response to their ship being attacked and sunk in international waters was presented as menacing.
Another common tactic of delegitimization media use is to describe the Iranian as a "regime" (e.g., Bloomberg, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, CNN, NBC News). The word "regime" immediately discredits a government, and cues the reader to oppose it. The phrase "Israeli regime" is virtually never used, unless in a quote from Iranian officials.
Earlier this week, large numbers of Israeli troops re-invaded southern Lebanon. Media attempted to find ways to present the operation as legitimate, including euphemistically using the phrase "cross over into Lebanon" to describe the invasion, or even blaming Hezbollah for the violence. CNN, for instance, wrote that, "Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon into the war on Iran," and that "Hezbollah just restarted the fight that Israel was waiting to finish," thereby flipping the realities of who was attacking whom.
There have also been a number of fawning profiles of Israeli leaders. "Benjamin Netanyahu's long career was built on conflict avoidance—then, October 7 transformed and radicalized him," wrote The Atlantic. In Britain, the coverage from some quarters was even more positive. "Netanyahu is the great war leader of our age" The Daily Telegraph stated, describing the prime minister as a "genius."
The Daily Telegraph's Monday front page headline read "Britain backs war on Iran," with a picture of diaspora Iranians cheering on the bombing of their country. The reality, however, is far less jingoistic. A YouGov poll published the same day found that only 28% of U.K. citizens support U.S./Israeli actions, with 49% expressing their opposition to them. Nevertheless, BBC anchor Nick Robinson suggested, on air, that protests against the U.S./Israeli attacks should be banned across the U.K.
This sort of mentality should come as no surprise, given BBC leadership's stated positions on Israel. The corporation's Middle East editor, Raffi Berg, is a former CIA operative and Mossad collaborator who has a signed letter of recommendation from Netanyahu on his office wall.
Anonymous BBC employees speaking to Drop Site News claimed that Berg's "entire job is to water down everything that's too critical of Israel." They went on to allege that he holds "wild" amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of "extreme fear" at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into "systematic Israeli propaganda." The BBC has disputed these claims.
If true, the sort of top-down pro-Israel bias at the BBC closely mirrors that of American outlets. A leaked 2023 New York Times memo revealed that company management explicitly instructed its reporters not to use words such as "genocide," "slaughter," and "ethnic cleansing" when discussing Israel's actions. Times staff must refrain from using words like "refugee camp," "occupied territory," or even "Palestine" in their reporting, making it almost impossible to convey some of the most basic facts to their audience.
CNN employees face similar pressure. In the wake of the October 7 attacks, the company's C.E.O. Mark Thompson sent out a memo to all staff instructing them to make sure that Hamas (and not Israel) is presented as responsible for the violence, that they must always use the moniker "Hamas-controlled" when discussing the Gaza Health Ministry and their civilian death figures, and barring them from any reporting of Hamas' viewpoint, which its senior director of news standards and practices told staff was "not newsworthy" and amounted to "inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda."
German media conglomerate Axel Springer, meanwhile - owner of outlets such as Politico and Business Insider - requires its employees to sign what amounts to a loyalty oath to support "the trans-Atlantic alliance and Israel." The company fired a Lebanese employee who, through internal channels, questioned the requirement.
American newsrooms are also filled with former Israel lobbyists. A MintPress News investigation found hundreds of former employees of Israel lobbying groups such as AIPAC, StandWithUs and CAMERA working in top newsrooms across the country, writing and producing America's news - including on Israel-Palestine. These outlets include MSNBC, The New York Times, CNN, and Fox News.
There are even ex-Israeli spies writing our news. Another MintPress report revealed a network of former agents of IDF intelligence outfit, Unit 8200, working in America's newsrooms, including at CNN and Axios.
Therefore, with American newsrooms presided over and staffed in no small part by pro-Israel zealots, it is far from a surprise that their coverage closely mirrors the outlook and biases of Washington and Tel Aviv.
And now, with CNN, CBS News, and TikTok owned by CIA asset Larry Ellison, the IDF's largest private funder and a close personal friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, we should only expect the propaganda to be dialed up to eleven.
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