Adam Johnson

When Palestinians are killed, it's either never referred to as a barbaric or a slaughter or a massacre, which is the case with the New York Times and Washington Post and most print media, and effectively the case with cable news such as CNN and MSNBC, which we covered.

which we argue is a form of a very obvious bias.

So Israel kills 20,000 children over the course of two years and somehow manages, and the number is probably double that, and somehow manages to do so without once committing a massacre or a slaughter, whereas the New York Times uses the term over 100 times in the first 60 days alone after October 7th.

And what we argue is that that's statistically impossible.

We looked at the asymmetry in coverage in terms of

Sympathetic victims, children, journalists.

We looked at the a totally asymmetrical coverage of anti-Semitism versus Islamophobia, which was overwhelming, which is overwhelming in the data.

We looked at these kind of mantras like right to defend itself, which almost always precede hand waving away mass carnage that emerged from Gaza in the first few months.

And the argument is that you can empirically show anti-Palestinian, pro-Israel bias in media, which we aim to do in a rigorous and thorough way.

And then from there, we can have a bigger conversation as to why or what we can do about that or whether people even view this as being a bad thing, because some people would see that.

I know that one of those pro-Israel bully groups did a review of our Intercept piece.

and basically made the argument, well, it's different because it's different.

Well, why is it different?

Why is slaughtering 20,000 children not a massacre or a slaughter, but everything Palestinians do is?

And their answer is effectively just, it's different because they're a terrorist organization or some kind of tautology.

And I don't think that's a very satisfactory answer to most people.

Well, the title is not meant to be provocative.

It's meant to be an actual argument, which is there was a genocide that had to be sold.

And it was one decided on very early, I argue.

So on October 8th, Tony Blinken issues the kind of pro forma tweet calling for a ceasefire and then immediately deletes it.