The latest report, A/81/249, of UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese is Truth under the rubble: media in the time of genocide. She summarises her findings:
"This report examines how the destruction of truth has become integral to the
destruction of a people. It identifies three interconnected patterns: the elimination of
Palestinian media workers – through killing, maiming, arbitrary detention, torture,
intimidation and the systematic labelling of them as “terrorists” – to suppress the
documentation of crimes; the construction of an information regime in Israel through
media restrictions, censorship, propaganda, hate speech, genocidal incitement and
denial; and the role of influential international media and digital platforms in
marginalizing Palestinian voices and reproducing Israeli narratives, normalizing legal
distortions, which ultimately legitimized atrocities. Together, these practices have not
merely accompanied genocide but have facilitated its commission and obstructed
accountability. Some aspects of this assault on truth might be described as
“mediacide”."
Ms Albanese's previous reports, Anatomy of a genocide A/HRC/55/73 (July 2024), Genocide as colonial erasure A/79/384 (October 2024), From economy of occupation to economy of genocide A/HRC/59/2 (July 2025), Gaza genocide: a collective crime A/80/492 (October 2025), Torture and Genocide A/HRC/61/71 (March 2026) and her campaigning for an end to genocide, through the framework of international humanitarian law, human rights, the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and international criminal law, have laid bare the depravity of the actions of the state of Israel and its prominent political and commercial enablers.
This latest report continues in that tradition and adds a searing indictment of trusted western mainstream media, as one of the most prominent collective enablers of the genocide.
"1. Perpetrators and enablers of genocide often seek to shape how genocidal
destruction is perceived and remembered. Eliminating those who bear witness,
inciting violence through “sympathetic” media and deploying information systems to
shield perpetrators are among the means by which this is achieved. In Palestine, these
appear as interconnected features of a long colonial project, the current genocidal
phase of which has intensified the war both on and through the media...
3. The report examines three mutually reinforcing patterns:
(a) The systematic targeting of Palestinian media workers and media and
telecommunications infrastructure, in the deadliest conflict ever recorded for
journalists. Hundreds of journalists, photographers, videographers, editors and
others have been killed, injured, arbitrarily detained, tortured, intimidated and
smeared as terrorists while documenting the destruction of their own society. Their
elimination has progressively deprived the world of its primary witnesses. In the
words of an Israeli soldier: “Whoever writes an article or works on a laptop is like
someone carrying a Kalashnikov and attacking us”;
(b) The broader Israeli architecture of information control, made of
censorship, access restrictions, coordinated media and advertising campaigns, and the
role of segments of the Israeli media in normalizing and promoting hatred, genocidal
incitement and denial;
(c) The role of influential international media and digital platforms in
reproducing Israeli narratives, marginalizing Palestinian voices, dehumanizing
Palestinians, suppressing legitimate criticism of Israel and ignoring or recasting legal
realities to obscure or legitimize conduct amounting to genocide.
4. Viewed together, these practices constitute an assault on truth that is intrinsic to
the genocidal violence they are intended to conceal. The elimination of witnesses, the
suppression of freedom of expression and the abandonment of fundamental ournalistic ethics may amount, in many ways, to “mediacide”: the systematic destruction of the media’s public function.
5. The Special Rapporteur notes that Palestinian journalists have endured the same
bombardment, displacement, hunger and exhaustion as the population whose
experience they record.6 Many now report from tents; some have collapsed live on
air from starvation and stress. Nevertheless, they continue to bear witness. As
professional journalism has been progressively annihilated, ordinary Palestinians
have assumed its burden, determined that neither they nor their people will disappear.
Every image, fragment of video and testimony that has left Gaza stands as an act of
resistance against colonial erasure."
Since 2023, Israel has killed nearly 300 journalists and wounded more than 400, more than all the major conflicts of the 20th century combined. They have also targeted journalists' families, "killing
around 710 relatives since October 2023, 436 in the first four months alone. While many deaths occurred amid indiscriminate Israeli attacks, evidence indicates that some families were deliberately targeted."
She goes on to document the unlawful detention and torture of journalists and their families, the destruction of communications infrastructure, smear campaigns, censorship, manipulation and incitement through domestic media and coopting of international media. Sections III Silencing the Witnesses and IV The Israeli media landscape: censorship, manipulation, incitement are or should be shocking but given the actions of the state of Israel in recent years won't be surprising. Section V Western media and platforms opens by noting:
"64. The genocide has exposed long-standing ideological biases in media coverage
of Palestine/Israel, including across Western traditional media and major digital
platforms. It has exposed a system that determines whose voices are heard and whose suffering is recognized. These attempts to influence opinions through content
curation, amplification and other forms of distortion have serious consequences for
the human rights of the Palestinian people and those who defend their rights."
The report goes on to indict western media and digital platforms as complicit in the genocide. The media outlets selected for examination were chosen for "their presumed authoritativeness and objectivity." The BBC, CNN and NYT are amongst those subjected to serious criticism.
"66. Access determines influence. Content analysis demonstrates that Western media
rely heavily on Israeli sources, with Israeli officials and pressure groups enjoying
privileged access to media decision makers, including at the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC). Internal editorial guidelines show how such influence
translates into practice. The BBC style guide, for example, omits Gaza from the
occupied territory and specifies the Israeli Government’s “preferred” description of
the West Bank and Gaza as “disputed’’ territories, without indicating that this is
contrary to international law. BBC also makes the misleading statement that
“outposts don’t mean settlements” and that they are “very different” because outposts
are not authorized by the Israeli Government and “defy it”. Indeed, different Israeli
Governments have protected and retroactively legalized illegal outposts, expanding
illegal colonization. Leaked New York Times guidance similarly advises caution
regarding the use of terms such as “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied
territory”, instructing journalists to use “Palestine” only “in very rare cases”.
67. Such editorial imperatives have marginalized historical context and legal
frameworks that are essential to understanding the root causes of this renewed
violence. Media references to the Nakbah, to decades of occupation and related brutalities, to the illegality and continued settlement expansion and to the 19 -year
blockade of Gaza are absent or minimized, with 7 October 2023 presented as the
origin of hostilities. Cable News Network (CNN) has directed journalists to “remind
our audiences” that Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians caused the conflict. The
resultant reporting obscures critical legal findings, presenting the military assault
primarily as Israel exercising its “right to self-defence”, rarely acknowledging the
significant limitations international law places on an occupying Power’s reliance on
such claims.
68. Media outlets have also repeatedly amplified unverified or false Israeli claims.
Concerns about this have been raised by journalists themselves, including those from
BBC and CNN, with the latter warning that such reporting amounted to
“journalistic malpractice”. Some of the most damaging narratives of the conflict –
... – were widely reported without verification. In several cases, these allegations could not be
independently substantiated, and corrections received far less prominence. All this
has tangible consequences. In the case of UNRWA, the amplification of
unsubstantiated allegations contributed to donor Governments suspending funding,
significantly weakening the provision of humanitarian assistance.
69. Reporting by traditional media also shapes how international law is understood.
Since October 2023, much of the media has reproduced what this Special Rapporteur
has previously described as “humanitarian camouflage”: using concepts of international humanitarian law to legitimize genocide. This framing presents mass
atrocities as humanitarian protection. Israeli authorities portrayed the concentration
of Palestinians into so-called “safe zones” and their mass displacement through
“evacuation orders” as measures to protect civilians. Western media has frequently
reproduced this narrative without challenging it, creating a veneer of humanitarian
concern despite mounting evidence. The New York Times eventually reported that
Israel repeatedly used 2,000-pound bombs in designated “safe zones”, killing
thousands of Palestinians, but only after initially lending legitimacy to the
misleading use of the term.
70. Similar patterns emerge in outlets’ attribution of civilian deaths to Hamas’s
tactics rather than to Israeli military actions. Editorial guidance of the German
broadcaster ARD presents civilian casualties as being primarily a consequence of
Hamas’s alleged use of “human shields”. Between October 2023 and August 2025,
The New York Times referred to “human shields” used by Hamas times and BBC
81 times. Systematic references to “Hamas-run hospitals” and “hospital shields”
and the unverified claims that Hamas operates from hospitals and other civilian sites
have lent credibility to narratives that supposedly legitimize attacks on protected
medical facilities. This framing is particularly significant because the allegation that
Hamas systematically used civilians as human shields is one of the Israeli
Government’s principal legal justifications for its genocidal campaign in Gaza,
including before the International Court of Justice.
71. Meanwhile, findings by the United Nations, including in the International
Court of Justice proceedings, and by human rights organizations, including on the
question of genocide, have often been underreported or presented as disputed. In more
than 100 documented instances, BBC presenters dismissed assertions that Israel was
committing genocide, while Israeli leaders’ genocidal statements went unmentioned.
72. When some facts could no longer be denied or “camouflaged”, reporting has
frequently omitted or downplayed Israeli responsibility. Content analysis has found
that BBC did so in 83 per cent of relevant headlines and The New York Times in 65
per cent. A striking example concerns the killing of Hind Rajab by Israeli forces,
which BBC still presents with the headline, “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help.
73. The unequal attribution of responsibility is matched by an unequal distribution
of empathy. Studies demonstrate that Israeli suffering is narrated in detail and
endowed with emotional and moral significance; Palestinian suffering is rendered
partial, abstract or incidental. Thus, although Palestinian children accounted for
approximately 99.7 per cent of child fatalities, they appeared in just over half of
the personalized CNN reports on child victims. Across two sampling periods, The
New York Times mentioned sexual violence against Israelis 76 times, but only four
times in relation to Palestinians,248 despite substantial evidence of its widespread use
against them. Even the moral vocabulary is unevenly allocated. Terms such as
“barbaric” are overwhelmingly reserved for violence against Israelis; at the German
broadcaster ZDF, 90.7 per cent of uses have referred to Israeli victims, while the term
has never been applied to attacks on Palestinians.
74. The same editorial logic extends to the treatment of evidence itself. Human
rights documentation, Palestinian perspectives and even expressions of solidarity
have been marginalized, while journalists departing from the dominant narrative have
faced pressure, disciplinary measures, reassignment or dismissal. Antoinette
Lattouf was unlawfully dismissed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation after
reposting a Human Rights Watch report on starvation in Gaza. The publicly funded
broadcaster spent more than $1.7 million of taxpayers’ money defending the
dismissal, before the Federal Court of Australia found it unlawful and noted that
senior management had acted to “appease the pro-Israel lobbyists”. At BBC Arabic,
journalists have been disciplined without any demonstration that editorial policies
had been breached, which has even reportedly prompted the resignation of a senior
journalist. Public events have been altered and documentaries withdrawn,
including the BBC film on Gaza health workers and the broadcast of Wajib by
ARD. Increasingly, reliance on human rights findings, criticism of Israeli State policies or solidarity with Palestinians have themselves been treated as suspect,
collapsed into allegations of antisemitism.
75. Such practices engage human rights obligations. For public service
broadcasters, disciplining journalists in absence of professional misconduct,
withdrawing commissioned works or suppressing lawful expressions must satisfy the
strict requirements of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In
the sole instance judicially examined, the Lattouf dismissal was held as unlawful and
attributable to external pressure.
76. Editorial restrictions on the use of legally relevant terminology raise concerns
about whether media reporting adequately reflects the legal characterizations,
accountability frameworks and rights claims recognized in international law.
Broadcasting dehumanizing content without correction engages the duty to prohibit
advocacy of hatred under article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights and article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Racial Discrimination. For private media, presenting unverified
belligerent claims as fact, reproducing one party’s legal characterizations without
acknowledging contrary arguments and according corrections less prominence than
the original misstatements falls short of the heightened due diligence required by the
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Where such conduct causes
identifiable harm – as in the suspension of UNRWA funding – a responsibility to
mitigate impact and remediate arises.
77. These obligations acquire particular urgency where there is a serious risk of
genocide – arising, as a due diligence obligation, upon knowledge of serious risk
thereof – which requires States, at a minimum, not to permit their own institutions
to obscure that risk. The patterns documented here persisted despite repeated
warnings from journalists, courts and United Nations bodies, raising serious questions
as to compliance with those obligations." (Emphasis in paragraph 77 is mine).
Digital platforms and specifically Meta, Twitter/X and Alphabet Inc (Google) get accused of direct complicity in and profiting from the genocide.
"78. As Israel has systematically eliminated Palestinian journalists and excluded
foreign media, social media has become indispensable for documenting events.
Journalists, human rights defenders, civil society organizations and United Nations
experts have increasingly relied on a handful of private platforms as primary channels
of information.
79. In doing so, companies such as Meta, X and Alphabet Inc. (Google) have
become the principal gatekeepers of information on Palestine. Through content
moderation, recommendation systems, advertising and monetization policies, they
have determined which narratives are amplified and which disappeared; the evidence
reviewed below indicates recurring patterns of discriminatory moderation, censorship
and amplification of Israeli Government narratives.
80. Close relationships between platform executives and Israeli officials have
reinforced these concerns. Following meetings with the President and the Prime
Minister of Israel in November 2023, Elon Musk characterized expressions such as
“from the river to the sea” and “decolonization” as “necessarily imply[ing]
genocide”, disingenuously conflating advocacy for Palestinian rights with support
for violence. Meanwhile, Alphabet has continued providing Israel with Project
Nimbus, supporting surveillance and artificial intelligence capabilities that are used
in ways that harm Palestinians.
1. Engineering the narrative
81. These institutional relationships are reflected in platform operations, which
have systematically censored content documenting human rights abuses in Palestine,
historical and political content and criticism of Israeli actions through removal of
posts and comments, account suspension, engagement restrictions and “shadow
banning”, often without notice or effective appeal. X has suspended hundreds of
accounts of activists, journalists and Palestinians documenting the genocide, with no
explanation, and leaked Meta data indicates that approximately 38.8 million posts
across Facebook and Instagram have been removed, banned or suppressed since late
2023, while engagement with prominent Palestinian news organizations has fallen
by 77 percent. Platforms have also demonstrated near-total compliance with the
large number of Israeli takedown requests. TikTok and Meta reported compliance
rates of 99.2 and 94 per cent, respectively. Although formally voluntary, such
requests are State conduct aimed at suppressing expression and, given near-total
compliance, operate as de facto removal orders. Precisely because they bypass any
legal process, they cannot satisfy the requirements of legality, legitimate aim and
necessity set out in paragraph 10 above.
2. A permissive architecture for hate
82. The same platforms that have suppressed Palestinian voices have failed to apply
their own content policies to hate speech, dehumanizing rhetoric, incitement to
violence against Palestinians and falsehood campaigns by senior Israeli officials and
media figures, including the statements examined in section IV above and those cited
before the International Court of Justice as evidence of genocidal intent. Channel 14, for example, maintains active Facebook and Instagram pages containing the same
type of content.
83. These platforms have also enabled degrading content by Israeli soldiers,
including footage of civilian destruction, looting and detainee humiliation. 277 A
“Hamas hunting club” Instagram page has featured images of blindfolded and bound
prisoners, while YouTube has permitted a song describing Palestinians as rodents
with lyrics including “One, Two, Shoot!” These examples demonstrate a failure to
enforce platforms’ own policies, contrasting sharply with the draconian enforcement
applied to Palestinian expression. By contrast, videos documenting the conduct of
Israeli soldiers have in some instances been removed by the Israeli military itself,
which in 2025 restricted soldiers’ public exposure amid concerns that such posts could
be used in war crimes proceedings abroad.
84. Platforms have also failed to remove campaigns delegitimizing Palestinian
journalists before their killing. Organizations such as Honest Reporting spread
unsubstantiated allegations, for instance, that Palestinian journalists working for
Reuters and Associated Press had advance knowledge of the 7 October attacks 283 –
claims amplified by Israeli officials but refuted by both agencies.
85. As described in paragraph 50, platforms have also profited from roughly
$50 million in Israeli advertising contracts, turning their advertising infrastructure
into an instrument of genocide denial. Despite user complaints, Google has reportedly
concluded that advertisements denying famine did not violate its policies. It has
also carried paid advertisements portraying the International Court of Justice
genocide case as a “blood libel” and discouraging donations to UNRWA.
86. Commercial complicity has extended to the suppression of accountability itself.
Following the publication of this Special Rapporteur’s report, “From economy of
occupation to economy of genocide” (A/HRC/59/23), Google carried Israeli-sponsored content containing false and misleading information designed to discredit
its findings and smear the mandate holder.
87. Social media companies should be assessed against the principles of corporate
responsibility to respect human rights set out in paragraph 12 above. For those that
mediate global access to information about an unfolding genocide, that responsibility
demands heightened due diligence. The Guiding Principles on Business and Human
Rights are engaged in three distinct ways. Where platforms actively suppress
protected expression, they directly cause adverse impacts. Compliance with
government takedown demands does not discharge that responsibility, which exists
independently of domestic law, State pressure and the absence of either notice or
remedy for affected users. Where their recommendation systems host and amplify
advocacy of hatred by third parties, they are at minimum directly linked to the
resulting harm. By monetizing such content, including by accepting payment to
disseminate State propaganda denying atrocities, platforms contribute directly to the
resulting harm.
88. Following the provisional measures order of the International Court of Justice
of January 2024, at the latest, no platform could claim ignorance of the risk and
urgency of the context in Gaza. Meta, in particular, had been on notice since 2018,
when the independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar found that its
platform had been “a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate” – a
conclusion the company’s own commissioned assessment accepted. Even after the
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification had confirmed famine and the
International Court of Justice had ordered the unhindered provision of humanitarian
aid, platforms accepted payment to disseminate messaging that denied the famine,
thereby contributing to the resulting harm within the meaning of the Guiding
Principles on Business and Human Rights. That contribution to harm is aggravated
by the fact that the platforms accepted payment for disseminating the content.
Where a company knowingly provides practical assistance that has a substantial effect
on the commission of international crimes, questions of complicity arise beyond the
Guiding Principles. At a minimum, this report establishes inadequate due diligence,
selective enforcement and the denial of remedy." (Emphasis in final paragraph mine.)
Ms Albanese concludes:
"89. Since October 2023, Israel has deployed every means at its disposal to
silence Palestinian journalism, creating conditions in which independent
reporting has become nearly impossible. Read in the context of the broader
campaign against the Palestinian people, the scale and intensity of this assault
reveal a deliberate effort not only to conceal mass atrocities, but also to erode the
very possibility of documenting them.
90. The evidence examined in this report describes a single, integrated
phenomenon that, in many respects, constitutes mediacide: the destruction of the
media’s essential function in the information environment surrounding the
occupied Palestinian territory. It operates through three mutually reinforcing
processes: (a) the systematic elimination of Palestinian journalists and their
means of documentation; (b) the dissemination and normalization of genocidal
incitement and denial by Israeli authorities and segments of the Israeli media;
and (c) the reproduction by influential Western media and digital platforms of
narratives that obscure, justify or legitimize atrocity crimes while marginalizing
Palestinian voices, evidence and international law.
91. Together, these phenomena are intrinsic to the ongoing genocide. Genocide
depends not only on the destruction of human beings, but also on the destruction
of the political, moral and evidentiary conditions that make that destruction
visible, intelligible and contestable. When witnesses are silenced, when
dehumanizing language becomes ordinary and when independent verification is
displaced by the claims of the perpetrator, violence acquires the appearance of
legitimacy and impunity becomes easier to sustain.
92. This makes the preservation of the record a legal imperative. At a time
when proceedings before the International Criminal Court and the International
Court of Justice seek to establish responsibility for the gravest international
crimes, the protections owed to journalists, the prohibition of incitement to
genocide and hatred and the obligations of States and corporate actors under
international humanitarian law, human rights law and the Guiding Principles on
Business and Human Rights remain fully in force. Systematic disregard for them
is itself relevant to the assessment of intent, knowledge and complicity.
93. The Special Rapporteur therefore urges States, the General Assembly,
judicial mechanisms, media organizations and technology companies to do their
utmost to protect those who report, bear witness, preserve documentation and
resist narratives that erase or legitimize crimes. The capacity to establish the
truth of what has occurred, and to act upon it, is integral to the protection of the
people this mandate exists to serve. Accountability depends on the survival of the
record. Without it, neither justice nor the prevention of future atrocities remains
possible."
I just want to repeat paragraph 90 and 91 and emphasise western media's and digital platforms' complicity:
"90. The evidence examined in this report describes a single, integrated
phenomenon that, in many respects, constitutes mediacide: the destruction of the
media’s essential function in the information environment surrounding the
occupied Palestinian territory. It operates through three mutually reinforcing
processes: (a) the systematic elimination of Palestinian journalists and their
means of documentation; (b) the dissemination and normalization of genocidal
incitement and denial by Israeli authorities and segments of the Israeli media;
and (c) the reproduction by influential Western media and digital platforms of
narratives that obscure, justify or legitimize atrocity crimes while marginalizing
Palestinian voices, evidence and international law.
91. Together, these phenomena are intrinsic to the ongoing genocide. Genocide
depends not only on the destruction of human beings, but also on the destruction
of the political, moral and evidentiary conditions that make that destruction
visible, intelligible and contestable. When witnesses are silenced, when
dehumanizing language becomes ordinary and when independent verification is
displaced by the claims of the perpetrator, violence acquires the appearance of
legitimacy and impunity becomes easier to sustain."
The report rounds off with a set of recommendations it is difficult to dispute:
95. To the General Assembly:
(a) Establish an independent mechanism to consolidate and preserve
evidence of crimes against journalists and the information environment in the
occupied Palestinian territory;
(b) Take all measures within its powers to ensure compliance with the
provisional measures of the International Court of Justice and so that Israel:
(i) Ceases all attacks against the information environment, releases
arbitrarily detained journalists, discloses the fate and whereabouts of the
forcibly disappeared, and grants both the International Committee of the
Red Cross access to detainees and international media and human rights
monitors access to Gaza;
(ii) Complies with the provisional measures of the International Court of
Justice, including by preserving evidence, including journalists’
documentation;
(iii) rescinds censorship measures, outlet bans and media-restrictive
legislation.
96. States should:
(a) Investigate and prosecute attacks against Palestinian journalists, in
line with Security Council resolution 2222 (2015) – especially attacks carried out
by citizens of their own countries who hold Israeli citizenship – and cooperate
fully with the International Criminal Court;
(b) Review public funding and institutional partnerships with media
organizations and digital platforms that systematically disseminate hatred or
incitement to discrimination, hostility, violence or genocide, or that materially
contribute to the concealment of atrocity crimes, for example through
suppressing protected expression;
(c) Treat journalists’ reporting, audiovisual material and archives as
evidence requiring preservation for future judicial proceedings and discharge
their duty to prevent genocide, including by protecting documentation thereof.
97. Media organizations and online platforms must stop laundering
propaganda through the journalistic form. To that end, they must:
(a) Verify belligerent parties’ claims before publication and issue
corrections of equal prominence;
(b) Cease retaliation against journalists for expression concerning
Palestine, and remediate harm;
(c) Cease arbitrary removal of reporting on potential international
crimes and provide transparent explanations and appeals;
(d) Conduct heightened human rights and international law due diligence
especially in situations presenting a serious risk of atrocity crimes, including
genocide;
(e) Preserve content documenting potential international crimes and
make it available, subject to appropriate safeguards, to accountability
mechanisms.
98. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court should investigate
direct and public incitement to commit genocide by government officials and
media figures as part of the ongoing Palestine investigation.
99. Journalists’ organizations, civil society and the public should defend those
documenting atrocities, demand accountability and sustain attention to detained
and disappeared journalists; and they should never forget that journalism ceases
to perform its public function when it reproduces the claims of power instead of
scrutinizing them."
But
