<
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-to-sell-a-genocide-exposes-the-double-standards-of-reporting-on-gaza-281223>
"When the University of Queensland Press cancelled the publication of Wiradjuri
poet Jazz Money’s book
Bila: A River Cycle because of a blog post by its
illustrator, 60 UQP contributors signed a letter of protest. Some declared they
would no longer publish with UQP. Fourteen staff members issued a statement
decrying “the precedent the University of Queensland has set”.
Had HarperCollins, a publisher owned and controlled by the Murdoch family,
nixed an Indigenous children’s book, the decision would perhaps not have been
experienced as such a betrayal. UQP, however, boasts on its website of
“publishing literary works, poetry and Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander
stories”: scarcely an orientation one usually associates with politicised book
pulping.
The Bila episode follows a recent pattern in which supposedly progressive
institutions and organisations respond to any connection to the Gaza genocide
as aggressively as their right-wing counterparts, or even more so.
Conservative politicians and the right-wing press systematically demonise the
Palestinian cause and its supporters. According to a study by Ette media, the
Australian published, between October 7 2023 and April 9 2026, an astonishing
412 articles wholly or in part about Palestinian writer Randah Abdel-Fattah.
Yet some of the most punitive campaigns have played out not in the corporate
sector but at the ABC and within the university sector.
In
How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza,
Adam Johnson explores a similar phenomenon in the United States. His book does
not focus, he says, on “the conservative or MAGA media’s dehumanization of
Palestinians”. This is partly because right-wing outlets such as
Fox News,
the
Wall Street Journal and
The Daily Wire don’t disguise their
anti-Palestinian stance, but also because the timing of the war in Gaza made
the reporting and commentary by supposed progressives particularly important.
“There was,” Johnson reminds us, “a Democratic president in office when the
genocide began in earnest, and support from Democrats in Congress and in the
think-tank and media world was dispositive in continuing said genocide.”
His critique of what he calls the “Center-Left media” is based on careful
documentation of some 12,000 articles and 5,000 television clips. He brings, as
they say, the receipts."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
