Book accuses major US media outlets of legitimizing Gaza narrative through selective framing
Media analysis documents disparities in language, emotional tone, and coverage frequency between Israeli and Palestinian narratives
NEW YORK, United States (MNTV) – A new book has accused major American news organizations of systematically shaping public opinion in favor of Israel during the destruction of Gaza through selective language, emotional framing, and deeply entrenched double standards in coverage.
In “How to Sell a Genocide,” journalist Adam Johnson argues that outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, Axios, USA Today, and Associated Press played a central role in legitimizing Israel’s military campaign while marginalizing Palestinian suffering.
Published by Pluto Books, the work is based on extensive media analysis of more than 12,000 articles from major outlets and 5,000 television segments aired on CNN and MSNBC.
Johnson claims the findings reveal a media system that overwhelmingly privileged Israeli narratives while portraying Palestinians through suspicion, fear, and dehumanizing stereotypes. According to his analysis, U.S. media repeatedly framed Israeli deaths in highly emotional language while minimizing or sanitizing the far larger scale of Palestinian casualties.
One of the book’s most striking findings centers on the phrase “right to defend itself.” Johnson found that television hosts, anchors, and reporters on CNN and MSNBC invoked Israel’s right to self-defense 755 times during the first 90 days of the war, while Palestinians were afforded the same language only eight times. Print media reportedly referenced Israel’s right to self-defense 100 times more frequently than Palestinian self-defense.
Johnson argues this imbalance became especially significant as Israeli leaders sought to build public support in the United States for military operations in Gaza following the October 7 attacks carried out by Hamas. He contends that influential outlets helped reinforce narratives that justified widespread destruction and displacement in Gaza while suppressing broader legal and historical context surrounding the Israeli occupation.
The book also accuses mainstream media of normalizing Israeli attacks on civilians through repeated use of the term “human shields.” According to Johnson’s data, CNN and MSNBC used the phrase nearly 800 times to describe Palestinians killed near militants, despite human rights groups disputing the blanket use of that justification. Yet Israeli forces’ documented use of Palestinian detainees in dangerous battlefield operations received almost no comparable coverage or framing.
Johnson further alleges that emotionally charged language was deployed selectively. Terms such as “massacre,” “slaughter,” “barbaric,” and “savage” were repeatedly used to describe the killing of around 1,200 Israelis during the October 7 attacks, while the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians during Israel’s military campaign rarely received similar descriptions despite repeated strikes on schools, hospitals, refugee camps, and aid facilities.
Another major focus of the book is the widespread media use of the phrase “Hamas-run” when referring to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Johnson argues the language was systematically used to cast doubt on Palestinian casualty figures, even though organizations such as the World Health Organization and Human Rights Watch had long considered the ministry’s statistics broadly reliable.
He notes that even officials in the administration of former President Joe Biden echoed similar skepticism toward Palestinian death tolls. In what Johnson presents as a dramatic contradiction, the Israel Defense Forces later acknowledged the general accuracy of Gaza Health Ministry casualty figures after the reported death toll surpassed 71,000.
The book also compares media treatment of Gaza with coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Johnson found that CNN and MSNBC discussed child deaths more frequently in Ukraine, where hundreds of children were killed during the early months of the war, than in Gaza, where the number of dead children exceeded 10,000 during the same period. He argues the terms “war crime” and “genocide” were applied rapidly and aggressively to Russia’s actions in Ukraine while being used far more cautiously regarding Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Johnson also accuses major outlets of disproportionately emphasizing antisemitism while downplaying Islamophobia in the United States after October 7. According to his research, headlines discussing antisemitism outnumbered those focused exclusively on Islamophobia by roughly 31 to one during the first six months of the conflict.
In interviews promoting the book, Johnson insisted that the media did not merely fail in its coverage but actively enabled the continuation of the war by legitimizing Israeli narratives and discrediting Palestinian accounts. He argued that claims surrounding hospitals, aid agencies, and civilian institutions in Gaza could not have gained broad public acceptance without validation from elite American media organizations.
The book is now fueling intense debate over the role of Western journalism in wartime propaganda, media bias, and public consent during one of the deadliest and most controversial conflicts of the modern era.
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