Declassified has long reported on the mainstream media’s role in paving the way for the genocide in Gaza through its amplification of Israeli perspectives, marginalisation of a history of occupation and double standards on the value of Israeli versus Palestinian lives.
In doing this, leading news outlets have stuck very closely to the foreign policy agenda of the UK government which first sought to privilege the exclusive rights of Israelis to defend themselves but which has, more recently, shifted to a more critical stance towards Netanyahu’s plans for ethnic cleansing and an escalation of its military operations in Gaza.
Starmer’s initial defence of Israel’s decision to cut off supplies of water and energy to Gaza seems a long time ago.
Now the government, unsettled by huge public pressure and backbench unrest and alarmed that Israel is widely seen around the world as off the leash, has condemned Israel’s plan to fully occupy Gaza and has even prevented Israeli officials from attending a major arms fair in London.
While remaining virtually silent on Israeli atrocities for most of the last two years, both Number 10 and the Foreign Office have issued a flurry of communications since the spring calling, for example, for a ceasefire, an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza that accelerated an unprecedented famine, recognition of a Palestinian state and for the suspension of Israel’s plan to expand its military presence in Gaza.
The UK media have followed this agenda to the letter. Analysis of the Nexis news database from 1 January to 21 August 2025 shows that the total number of stories referencing Gaza increased by nearly 50% in the period after May 1, from 64,000 to 94,000, with even bigger increases in topics that were previously not on the mainstream agenda.
This is not only in relation to harrowing pictures of starving children which provided the immediate backdrop to the emergence of a more confrontational edge in relation to Israeli actions.
Stories referencing ‘Gaza and genocide’ also increased by 138% after May 1. After having refused to acknowledge genocide as a headline concern in its initial reporting of Gaza and often shutting down the few voices attempting rightly to use this language, the BBC has recently reported on, for example, the claim by Israeli human rights groups that genocide is taking place in Gaza and quoted the UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese talking about an Israeli “economy of genocide”.
References to genocide have shot up by 193% on BBC World and by 181% on the dedicated BBC News channel since early May while they have doubled in the pages of the Guardian.
Stories that reference ‘Gaza’ and ‘war crime’ have increased by 88% including significant jumps on BBC1 (up by 128%), BBC News (139%) and BBC World (157%). The BBC’s website even carried a lengthy story in June by its international editor Jeremy Bowen that acknowledged, for once, the fact that “Israel is accused of the gravest war crimes”.
Reports that feature both ‘Gaza’ and ‘criticism of Israel’ have jumped by more than four times with 948 of the 1,174 mentions in UK media featuring since May 1. This includes big rises for the Guardian (up by more than three times), BBC World (4.5 times), BBC1 (five times) and BBC News (eight times).
Despite Israeli forces assassinating more than 270 Palestinian journalists inside Gaza since 7/10, a rate of killing not seen in any previous wars, 90% of UK media coverage of ‘Gaza’ and ‘targeting of journalists’ has taken place since May 1.
None of this should suggest that journalists have suddenly come to their senses and acknowledged their role in facilitating the conditions for a genocide.
Instead, it is evidence of the connection between dominant media frames and government agendas. When the latter have had to shift because its previous unambiguously pro-Israel stance had become unsustainable, there is suddenly space for more stories with a critical dimension.
Of course, we shouldn’t exaggerate the extent to which government and media have dropped their previous convictions. They have simply been forced to adjust their rhetoric if not their underlying strategic positions.
For example, the government may have prevented Israeli officials from attending the DSEI arms fair in London but it is still permitting Israeli arms companies to take part; it may have suspended a some arms licences but many of its weapons sales are continuing, even during a genocide.
Meanwhile, for all the apparent changes to what was effectively a pro-Israel narrative, the media continue to promote pro-Israeli perspectives that are familiar to anyone following mainstream bulletins and articles since 7/10.
The BBC, for example, continues to police references to genocide such as when a BBC Radio 2 presenter cut off a caller before they could even utter the word and, similarly, shut down a student celebrating his A-level results who used the opportunity of airtime to condemn genocide in Gaza.
All the main news broadcasters and press titles still continue to refer to the “Hamas-run health ministry” (but never prefix a reference to Benjamin Netanhayu as a man who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes).
Indeed, the five sources that continue to parrot this dehumanising language the most are all BBC platforms that have actually increased their use of this phrase since May 1: up from 141 stories to 313 on BBC News and from 111 to 197 stories on BBC World.
The mainstream media still refuse to confront the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in relation to the more than 600 spy flights it has carried out over Gaza from its base at Akrotiri in Cyprus.
After Declassified and the National drew attention to this catastrophic failure in July 2025, the BBC’s defence correspondent Jonathan Beale mocked the idea that there was anything to report.
This was immediately contradicted by an article in The Times acknowledging that the flights were still continuing and that the MoD was even forced to turn to a US firm as some of its own planes were unavailable.
All in all, however, a mere 75 stories on ‘surveillance flights’ have appeared this year – mostly in either the National or on BBC Parliament simply because of questions asked in the House by pro-Palestine MPs.
Where it is covered, journalists mainly continue to repeat the MoD’s line that the flights are only to assist in the search for hostages.
Finally, and perhaps most telling in terms of what both government and media consider as the key foreign policy issue at the moment, coverage of Israel and Gaza is overshadowed by support for Ukraine.
Just as Number 10 has issued three times as many communications on Russia/Ukraine than on Israel/Gaza, the total number of stories in UK media on the former is more than double that of the latter: 225,000 against 94,000.
It is hardly a coincidence that reporting criticism of Israel, allegations of war crimes and the unravelling of a genocide has increased, after so many months of silence, at the same time as western governments, have also stepped up their criticism of the Israeli government.
This is the story of a compliant media that indexes its coverage of key issues of the day to that of government and that adapts its broad positions in relation to the official political climate.
Far from establishing their own agendas independent of government, they are much more likely to reproduce established frames and strategic priorities.
That’s why that, in the context of a genocide, increasing numbers of people see this as evidence of complicity and not of journalism.
Source: Declassified UK