Missteps in Gaza coverage spur push for a global code of media ethics

At the end of 2023, international media finds itself at an inflection point. The coverage of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, which has been characterized by UN experts as “a genocide in the making,” has been roundly criticized for its dehumanizing portrayal of Palestinians and valorization of official narratives justifying the slaughter. The questions and protests are not just coming from outside newsrooms. The BBC’s own journalists have decried the “double standard in how civilians are seen,” and in Australia, almost 300 journalists have signed a public letter urging “Australian newsroom leaders to be as clear-eyed in their coverage of atrocities committed by Israel as they are of those committed by Hamas.”

For many, especially those forced to endure humanitarian crises, this type of coverage is not new. Dehumanizing portrayals have long been a core feature of how the global press presents much of the world, especially communities in crisis and in the Global South. Reporting on societies in crisis has reinforced a paternalistic and colonial world view, allowing audiences and policymakers to construct a bifurcated, racialized, and ultimately false view of the world. That view is characterized by Western civility, competence, and morality vs. non-Western primitivity, precarity, helplessness, and immorality. As The New Humanitarian stated in an October editorial: “We are preconditioned not to see Palestinian humanity because colonialism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia are still the dominant lens through which states, institutions, people, and media in the West view the world (although geopolitical interests are, of course, also at play).”

Such widespread ethical failures point to a need for fundamental changes in how all media — international and otherwise — operate and the standards that we uphold. Traditional media ethics — meaning the norms governing relationships between journalists, their subjects, and audiences that form the core of professional codes governing what is covered and how it is covered — grew out of a bygone age. It was a time when international news was largely reported by “foreign correspondents” to audiences back home, who largely shared the reporters’ values and biases. In that world, the international media had a virtual monopoly on determining what the news was and how to tell it.

In today’s globalized online spaces, traditional conceptions of the place and role of journalism and journalists are increasingly challenged. Media organizations are no longer the sole gatekeepers. Our ability to unilaterally frame events has been severely eroded. People around the world can see and respond in real time to media reports; anyone with a cell phone and social media account can report what they see as “the news” and rebut what they see as erroneous reporting. In the introduction to their 2010 book, Media Ethics Beyond Borders, Stephen Ward and Herman Wasserman wrote that “we live amid a media revolution that blurs geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries” and noted that “a global media ethics does not yet exist.” Nearly a decade and a half later, that hasn’t changed, and the pace of “rapid and disorienting change” they spoke of has only accelerated. The need to imagine how such a global ethics might be constructed and what it would look like is even more urgent now.

We can use the fallout from missteps in Gaza coverage to build a better way forward. In 2024, journalists are well-placed to commit to creating a new journalism that more honestly and equitably reflects the world we live in today. At The New Humanitarian, we have made decolonizing our journalism — centering our reporting in the communities we cover, decentering Western narratives, and exposing the long-hidden historical roots of global inequities — a critical pillar of our five-year strategy. Other news organizations are charting their own paths. Let’s share our thinking and together commit to drafting a global code of media ethics.