On August 25, covering the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strikes on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital that killed over 20 people including five journalists, CNN published an article titled “Outrage after Israel kills five journalists in ‘double-tap’ attack on Gaza hospital.” The article could be placed along a long line of increasingly critical coverage of Israel in the past few months. It quotes a statement from the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel and the Palestinian Territories that reads “This has gone on far too long. Too many journalists in Gaza have been killed by Israel without justification.” It also includes large pictures of the five journalists in their press gear.

One of the subheadings is titled “A ‘watershed moment’” which is part of the quote of the FPA’s statement. If this were a watershed moment for CNN, their pivot in coverage of the genocide would be welcomed. For example, in explaining the name Hind’s Hall chosen by Columbia University protesters for the hall they occupied, in May 2024, CNN host Kasie Hunt referred to Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl murdered while she was trapped in a car surrounded by dead family members, as “a woman who was killed in Gaza”. Early in 2024, pushing back on Dearborn, Michigan mayor Abdullah Hammoud’s use of the terms “occupation” and “apartheid”, Dana Bash, interrupted Hammoud to say, “the notion of occupation is, again, we’re not having this debate right now, but I will just say that there are a lot of people who say you can’t occupy a land that you came from initially…and also the question of so-called apartheid, is very much hotly debated.”

Similar arguments about the terms genocide and famine also took up space in the mainstream media. Now that the UN backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification has declared unequivocally there is famine in Gaza while Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have declared Israel’s actions a genocide, these arguments are largely settled. Reflecting this, the New York Times published Omer Bartov’s opinion piece where he determined that his “inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people.” Even the Jeffrey Bezos-owned Washington Post covered B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel’s separate reports determining what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide in an article titled “Leading genocide scholars see a genocide happening in Gaza”.

The media, however, are sure to stay within reasonable bounds. That Post article is subtitled, so you don’t miss it, “Israeli officials and politicians have rejected the accusation, insisting upon Israel’s right to self-defense in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.” The same goes for politicians. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, after saying at an event that the “genocide and destruction” in Gaza had to end, clarified, “I want to be clear that I am not accusing Israel of genocide.” Bernie Sanders, leading the legislative push to block arms sales to Israel, won’t use the term genocide and largely limits his criticism for Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is a game as old as Israel. In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon after a failed assassination attempt against Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov in London conducted by an organization that wasn’t present in Lebanon. In months, 19,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed, the majority of whom civilians, while 30,000 were wounded. In September, the IDF created a perimeter around the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, dismantling early resistance, while Christian militants armed and trained by the IDF slaughtered possibly 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese Shiite civilians.

The horror was undeniable and had to be acknowledged. But, as Noam Chomsky has noted, it was only recognized under certain terms. The Labor Party set the tone, attempting to blame the massacre solely on Likud. As Shimon Perez stated, “Let us not include the great and important organization that carries out orders” referring to the IDF, “and which is blameless altogether; let us leave them out of this painful political controversy.” Chomsky quotes Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Seymour Martin Upset, and Michael Walzer, who wrote in a joint statement, “All of us must now say to the Begin-Sharon Government” the Likud Party government in power at the time, “You are doing grave damage to the name of Israel, long associated with democracy conciliation and peace’.”

This must be what has been clouding CNN’s view of the genocide. In October 2023, an explosion in the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital courtyard killed hundreds of people. The Israeli government disputed it was their bomb that struck the courtyard, putting out conflicting evidence, and spreading quickly debunked narratives. This included a video they claimed showing a rocket fired from Gaza that crashed into the hospital. Later, it was revealed to be a projectile launched from Israel that had no connection to the explosion. That video was used by CNN in a piece that determined, though with some uncertainty, the explosion was due to a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. Still, Oliver Darcy days prior was chastising the New York Times in an analytical piece for CNN predicated on an assumption that Israel’s rapidly dismantling story was gospel: “When news organizations err, it is expected that they own up to their mistakes”.

Today, over 1,000 health workers have been killed by Israel and every hospital in Gaza has been bombed. When Hind Rajab was killed, two medics attempting to save her were also shot to death. In March, 15 medics from the Palestinian Red Crescent were killed by Israeli troops despite the sirens in their ambulances being on when the IDF opened fire. They were subsequently, along with their ambulances, buried in a mass grave. Witnesses said, upon discovering their remains, some of them had their hands and legs tied as well as gunshot wounds to the head and chest. 

But even prior to October 7, Israel regularly killed medical personnel. In 2018, during a March of Return protest, volunteer medic, twenty-year-old Rouzan al-Najjar was killed by Israeli snipers as she tried to evacuate wounded protesters. During Operation Cast Lead in 2009, Dr. ‘Issa ‘Abd al-Rahim Saleh was attempting to evacuate a wounded man from a building when Israel shelled the building, decapitating him. In April 1996, Israel conducted a seventeen-day campaign in Lebanon, in which more than 1,100 air raids took place and 154 civilians in Lebanon. On April 13, near the Fijian Battalion UN checkpoint, the IDF fired rockets at a vehicle containing thirteen civilians, killing two women and four young girls. The vehicle had a blue flooding light, a siren, a red crescent painted on top, and the word “ambulance” written in Arabic on the hood and on both sides. 

Perhaps, CNN was shocked by the killing of journalists by Israel on August 25. However, over 270 journalists and media workers were killed prior to the attack. Israel’s war on journalism also predates October 7. On May 11, 2022, Shireen Abu Akleh, who had worked as an Al Jazeera reporter for 25 years, was shot in the face by the IDF while wearing a blue press vest during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. At her funeral, which was attended by larger numbers than any other in Palestine since 2001, Israeli police beat pallbearers holding her coffin and threw stun grenades at the crowd of mourners.

Could CNN really be shocked by the Nasser Hospital bombing? The US and its proxies have been at the forefront of violence against medical workers and journalists for years. Among those quoted by CNN on August 25 was Jerome Grimaud, the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency coordinator in Gaza who said staffers were, “forced to shelter in the laboratory as Israel repeatedly struck the building amidst rescue efforts.” MSF has experience with this sort of violence. In 2016, US tankers were meeting US made F15s flown by Saudi pilots mid-air to refuel them so they wouldn’t have to land between bombing missions in Yemen. In October 2016, a Saudi strike hit a funeral killing 140 people. On March 15, two strikes hit a crowded market killing ninety-seven civilians, twenty-five children among them. And on October 26, an MSF hospital was hit with multiple air strikes, leaving, by their estimate, 200,000 people without “lifesaving medical care.” One year prior, an MSF hospital in Afghanistan was struck by a US airstrike, killing 42 people and injuring 30 others.

Two of the journalists killed at Nasser reported for Reuters. In 2007, a US attack helicopter killed two Reuters journalists in Iraq. The full story of what transpired was only pieced together after Chelsea Manning leaked footage of the attack to Wikileaks. Perversely, instead of holding any of the perpetrators responsible, the US government charged Manning under the Espionage Act leading to a conviction and sentencing of 35 years, which she served seven of. Julian Assange would also be tried under the Act for publishing the video.

On October 2, 2018, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had published several articles critical of the Saudi government, walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to acquire paperwork to marry his fiancée. Inside, he was met by a team of Saudi agents who murdered him and dismembered his body with a bone saw. Khashoggi’s murder (justly) received outrage at the time. Countless op-eds questioning the US-Saudi relationship were published and on December 11, Time named Khashoggi and other journalists persons of the year. However, in July 2019, Trump vetoed three measures with bipartisan support that would have blocked the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, claiming they would “weaken America’s global competitiveness and damage the important relationship we share with our allies and partners.” By the next year, one NBC News analytical piece described relations between Saudi Arabia and the US as “cozy.” Joe Biden maintained this coziness, beginning his first meeting with Mohammad Bin Salman as president with a fist bump.

Maybe this is why certain politicians and outlets like CNN are changing their tune. It could be they’ve seen how drastically public opinion has shifted and how little of an effect it has had on the Trump administration. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if they acknowledge reality, like they did for Khashoggi. It won’t change anything. They may as well say what the rest of us have been saying for almost two years now since they know the security establishment goals they’ve long vied for will continue to be met. Although, it is hard to say that this change in posturing is not welcomed. At the very least, millions of people will be able to read the news and not feel like they’re absolutely insane.