The New York Times deleted a video of violence in Amsterdam it published once it realized that the perpetrators were Israelis and not an anti-Semitic mob. The Times had falsely claimed that the video showed Israeli football fans being attacked while in the Netherlands to support their team. What the video actually showed was a group of Israelis chasing and attacking locals.
Instead of changing their story and highlighting the bad behavior of the Israelis, the Paper of Record decided to delete the video. Why was it newsworthy when Dutch fans attacked Israelis but not when Israelis attacked Dutch people? The short answer is that the story no longer fits the long-running narrative of a new wave of anti-Semitic violence surging across the West. Therefore, it was dropped entirely.
Crucial to understanding why corporate media outlets cover some events and not others is the sociological concept of “Worthy Victims.” Developed by media theorists Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Worthy Victims postulates that the amount of press coverage any violent event receives depends on two factors: the perpetrators and the victims.
If the perpetrator is our enemy, and there is political capital to be made from highlighting their crime, then the media will deem the victim “worthy” — especially if the victim is a pro-U.S. figure. If, however, you die at the hands of the U.S. or its allies, you can expect little sympathy or coverage from the press. This is especially the case if you are a Communist, Muslim, or any other designation that renders you unworthy of media attention.
A 2022 MintPress News study tested this theory out, comparing the top media outlets’ coverage of the Russia/Ukraine War with that of three other conflicts going on at the same time: Israel’s attack on Syria, the Saudi-led onslaught on Yemen, and the U.S. bombing campaign against Somalia.
The study found that Ukraine received 400 times as much attention from The New York Times, Fox News, CNN, The Washington Post and MSNBC than the other three conflicts combined. This is precisely because the victims in the first instance were from an allied country (Ukraine), and the perpetrator was an enemy state (Russia). In the other three examples, however, the aggressor was the United States or its allies, and the victims were enemies of Washington.
It is the same reason why The New York Times and other top outlets relentlessly covered Hamas’ October 7 attack, describing it as a barbarous act of terrorism but barely covering ongoing Israeli crimes of vastly greater magnitude. When these events are covered, they are discussed in sanitized language, often trying to hide the perpetrator by using a passive voice.
Turning the outrage tap on and off is a key way in which the media manufacturers consent to unpopular U.S. foreign policy decisions, hiding certain atrocities from our gaze and placing others on our screens. The media have concluded that they can make the public believe and support just about anything, but their task would become much more difficult if we understood how they play on our emotions.
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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
