Israel’s destructive military campaign in Gaza, which has so far killed over 35,000 Palestinians, including nearly 14,000 children over the past seven months in revenge for the Hamas assault on Oct 7 last year, has exposed the objectivity and impartiality claims of many leading Western newspapers and media outlets.

A couple of its stories have come in for considerable stick after readers and small independent digital media platforms investigated not just the claims contained in them but also who was responsible for the newsgathering, ie, whose byline appeared on these.

Most of the US and UK media are either blindly sympathetic to Israel or petrified of it to do the kind of journalism they should be doing. I am aware only of British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan being dropped by his channel in the US.

But all is not as bleak. Some of the journalists on CNN have done sterling work.

Matthew Chance’s story, based on whistle-blowers’ accounts of Palestinian detainees’ sub-human treatment and torture at a military-run camp, made headlines. CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh reported not just on the 14,000 children killed but also on the heart-breaking plight of the 20,000 WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family), many of whom are amputees.

Israel may have banned Al Jazeera recently for its bold, powerful reporting, but the widespread use of social media bringing to our smartphones horrific images of the Gaza mass murder is slowly turning the tide against the total endorsement of the Israeli position. The student protests in the US and Europe are just one indication.

Read the full op-ed by Abbas Nasir here.