KARACHI: The international media is reflecting double standards in reporting the Hamas-Israel conflict as it is afraid of questioning the ‘good guys’ and being criticised. The credibility of the media has increasingly suffered due to such biased and agenda-based reporting.

Veteran journalist Kathy Gannon expressed these view during her lecture on ‘Reporting Wars in the 21st Century: The Rise and Rise of Agenda Journalism’, organised by the Centre for Excellence in Journalism at the Institute of Business Administration (CEJ-IBA) under its Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture series here on Friday.

Ms Gannon, who has decades of experience in reporting from conflict zones especially from Afghanistan where she was even shot and wounded in an attack, was speaking from the United States via a remote video link.

Moderating the discussion, journalist Umber Khairi said Israel was obliterating traces of Palestinian life and culture in the Gaza war, but was still insisting that it was on a high moral ground.

Journalist Kathy Gannon says international media reflecting double standards on Gaza war

It also refused to follow and comply with the rules of war as well as listen to the International Court of Justice, she said, adding that around 95 journalists and media workers had been killed since the Hamas-Israel conflict began in October 2023 and there were also those who were singled out and targeted.

Ms Gannon said the job of reporters was to provide trustworthy information to people and not to tell them what to do and what not. The people should be left to decide and make opinions on their own by trustworthy and independent reporting.

But at present, she said, journalism was increasingly reflecting agenda-based reporting and lack of independence. “And due to this, our credibility has increasingly suffered.”

She said such reporting had preconceived ideas and agendas. Taking sides and playing the role of activists and judges not only compromised the credibility of journalists, but also stifled their ability to question the powerful and the so-called ‘good guys’.

Giving an example, she said journalists took sides while reporting in Afghanistan. They did not give the Taliban chance to give their version and explain themselves and their movement.

Besides, she added, there were various questions that journalists could have asked the Taliban and the people there as far as the American war in Afghanistan was concerned, but they adopted an accusatory tone and tried to expose the Taliban and replace them with the US supported government.

Similarly, the international media was showing double standards in its coverage of the Hamas-Israel conflict, she said. Israel was not being questioned for its actions in Gaza because newsmen were afraid of being criticised and challenging the ‘good guys’, she added.

And the price of such agenda-based and dictated reporting was also that it helped people rewrite history in a biased and wrong manner. Therefore, the reporters should be independent and open-minded while doing their job, to an extent that they’re able to realise that the ‘good guys’ were always not good and, similarly, ‘bad guys’ were not always bad guys. But sadly, nothing was being done to go into the depth of that issue and solve it, she added.

In reply to a question, she said people might like biased reporting and views more and some media organisations did get better rating due to that but it was still not a reporter’s job to shape people’s views like a TV hots or opinion makers.

When asked whether people found social media more trustworthy than the mainstream news outlets, she said it might be like that but it should not be so as it was difficult to determine the credibility of news sources on social media platforms.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2024