INTERVIEW - Complicity, censorship and impunity: 'Headline fixer' Assal Rad on how Western media covered Gaza

Nothing has changed for Palestinians under ceasefire 'except for they're being killed on a slower scale,' says Rad Case for war on Iran 'very similar to the sort of playbook' used to justify 2003 Iraq invasion, she says In her new book, Assal Rad places two New York Times headlines side by side. One reads: "Russia Pounds Ukrainian Cities in One of the Largest Air Attacks of the War." The other: "Explosion Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties in Dense Neighborhood." Above the first, a note reads: "Attacker named." Above the second: "By who?" For Rad, a scholar of Middle East history and political advocate known online as the "headline fixer" for striking through and rewriting Western headlines on Gaza, the difference is no accident. "It's complicity, in my view, because they're very knowingly doing it. It's not an accident," she told Anadolu. “You see a difference in the way they treat the Russian invasion of Ukraine versus Israel's actions in Gaza,” she added. Her book, Don't Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide, borrows its subtitle from the 1988 work by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, who, she said, argued that the press in Western liberal democracies functions as "a propaganda arm of the state." Rad said outlets still frame the Gaza genocide “as sort of conventional war" and treat it as "a tragedy or a consequence of urban warfare rather than a deliberate policy being carried out by Israel." She pointed to a leaked New York Times memo that instructed reporters to avoid words such as “genocide” and ethnic cleansing, according to the US-based news outlet The Intercept. A Times spokesperson said at the time that "issuing guidance like this to ensure accuracy, consistency and nuance in how we cover the news is standard practice." "Every major institution and human rights organization in the world, including Israeli human rights organizations, including multiple UN reports, have concluded that Israel has committed genocide. And yet, they want to avoid that language, claiming neutrality," Rad said. Rad said there is "a very real legal implication" behind that choice. "If the Western media admits that Israel is committing genocide, then they're also admitting that their own governments are complicit in that genocide and continue to illegally aid it," she said. But she also sees a "subconscious element" at work. There is an "internalized Orientalism and racism that informs the way that many people in the Western world think about the region as a whole," she said, describing a “dehumanization process that becomes so ingrained that I think there are genuinely people who are unaware of their own racism.” 'Killed on a slower scale' For Rad, the decline in Gaza coverage in the Western media over the past year has come "under the banner” of a ceasefire agreement. "Nothing has changed for Palestinians on the ground except for their being killed on a slower scale," she said. Her comments come as Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza enters its fourth year, with more than 74,000 Palestinians killed and over 175,000 injured since October 2023, according to Palestinian figures. Israeli attacks have continued despite a ceasefire that took effect on Oct. 10, 2025. Palestinian figures put the toll since then at 1,454 killed and 5,090 injured. Rad also pointed to the killing of Palestinian journalists. "When you slaughter all of the journalists who are telling the world what is happening, it really helps to decrease and decline the amount of footage that people are seeing." Speaking on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel and the launch of its devastating war on Gaza, Rad said the date is "presented as if it exists in this vacuum," erasing the decades of Israeli occupation and blockade that came before it. 'Complete nonsense' Rad's book also examines State Department briefings under former US President Joe Biden, but she stressed that her criticism is aimed at "institutional bias," not at reporters in the room. Once their reports are edited, she said, "it turns into, 'Well, this is what they said,' even though the journalists themselves know they're not getting real answers." Asked about former Biden administration officials who have since distanced themselves from that policy, Rad did not hold back. "It's complete nonsense. They knowingly did everything that they did," she said. "The fact that these officials feel comfortable to be in these spaces and feel comfortable to pretend like they were trying to do anything else is all about spinning the narrative and trying to absolve themselves for their own criminality." Former Biden administration officials have defended their record, saying they pressed Israel to allow more aid into Gaza. From Iraq to Iran Rad traces that impunity to the US’ 2003 invasion of Iraq, after which she said neither officials nor media faced consequences. She sees the same pattern in the war on Iran, calling the case for it "very similar to the sort of playbook that was used in order to justify the invasion of Iraq." What has changed, she said, is the public, with a majority of Americans opposing the Iran war from the outset "because the trust in government and media has completely declined over watching the Gaza genocide." "Accountability has to start with the war criminals," she said. "At the very least, if you're a journalist that is not writing the truth, I don't think you should have a job at the outlet in which you are not writing the truth for." "There is this idea in the Western world that they toast the notion of a free press, that they celebrate the idea of a free press, and yet for Palestinians, the press vest is a target."