The media has long been wielded as a powerful tool during times of war, shaping public perception, influencing morale, and even swaying the course of conflict. The news is rarely delivered objectively but is rather slanted in some way to influence its recipients.
Canadian commentator Howard Levitt in the country’s National Post said that “in much of today’s media, particularly coverage of international conflict, there appears to be an embedded assumption about who occupies the moral high ground. Once that assumption is fixed, coverage adjusts around it. Facts that reinforce it are highlighted. Facts that challenge it are softened, buried, or ignored.”
Through the strategic dissemination of information, propaganda, and selective reporting, governments and military leaders have used media outlets to rally support, demonise adversaries, and control narratives both domestically and internationally.
In the digital age we live in, the reach and speed of media have amplified its impact, making it an indispensable element in modern warfare and psychological operations as information is presented in ways that can be informative but also potentially harmful.
The media ignores or minimises certain stories, meaning that the public may perceive these events as less urgent or consequential, regardless of their actual impact. This selective reporting can shape the narrative by directing attention away from issues that may be inconvenient or controversial, further reinforcing the agendas of those in control of the media.
Selective reporting about the aftermath of aggression, such as displacement, expulsion, infrastructure damage, or civilian casualties, also contribute to downplaying the aggression. When these aspects are not prominently featured, news recipients may underestimate the human cost and the urgency of the conflict.
From the other standpoint, we, the recipients of news, are controlled and manipulated by the media as it manufactures consent and dissent. The media can therefore mould our thinking and bias framing stories the way it wants.
Reactions to suffering can be shaped by repeated exposure and the framing and wording of events in the media. However, when it presents such occurrences as routine happenings, viewers lose interest, developing what is commonly referred to as “empathy fatigue”.
Over time, the extraordinary suffering depicted in news reports may begin to feel ordinary. These patterns contribute to a dangerous environment where acts of brutality are accepted as inevitable, and the dignity of those affected is overlooked. The media then normalises suffering and inhumanity.
Observing the media coverage of the war on Iran, it is possible to think of a rerun of the Iraq War. Not surprisingly, the Western media is often happy to parrot the lines put out by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the way it earlier parroted former US president George W Bush and Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time, who presented flawed intelligence to the UN that justified US-led military action.
With little critical analysis, the Western media echoes, often without scrutiny, the positions and rhetoric of the US and Israeli governments.
The choice of wording can minimise the severity of events, trivialise crises, and deprive victims of dignity. It sanitises the war as it downplays its effects with passive terms such as “precision strikes”, “collateral damage”, or “operations”, instead of the reality of bombardments.
In contrast, when news stories originate from Iran, they are frequently accompanied by phrases such as “Iran alleges”, “Iran claims”, or “according to Iranian sources”. These qualifiers subtly cast doubt on the reliability of the information, framing it as questionable or unverified.
In contrast, statements from the US or Israel are typically presented directly, without such caveats, making them appear more authoritative and credible.
According to the Western media, Iran is less deserving of nuclear arms than either the US or Israel. Absent from the coverage of the war is the validity of Iran’s rights and the constant American meddling in Iranian matters, seen in the killing of Qassem Suleiman, head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, with six others in Iraq in 2020, for example, and the US strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites in June 2025.
Instead, the Western media focuses on outright repression in Iran, highlighting anti-regime protests even though many Iranians view the US and Israel attacks as violations of their sovereignty. In fact, the Iranian regime is pictured as the oppressor and the Americans are the saviours, and this is how the war is often delivered to the outside world.
The bombing of a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, was presented in the Western media as the result of a failed Iranian missile, rather than as an intentional act of aggression, for example. By framing the incident in this fashion, the media shifted the blame onto Iran itself.
This selective reporting not only obscured the truth but also shaped public perception to view the tragedy as an internal mishap rather than a consequence of either failed US precision or the intentional violation of human rights. It was only later that the Western media had to acknowledge the bombing as a deliberate US strike.
The Israeli strike on Iran’s Evin Prison last year that killed 79 people including prisoners, prison guards, and visiting family members was a war crime. However, the headline “What to know about Iran’s Notorious Evin Prison” shifted attention from the loss of life to sensational aspects, failing to highlight the human costs.
The tendency to frame Iranian casualties as routine or peripheral, and Israeli and American casualties as exceptional or tragic, contributes to a skewed narrative that serves political interests and influences audience sentiment. The newspaper USA Today has talked of how “the death toll in the Iran war has risen,” for example, referencing the American soldiers who met their deaths and totally ignoring the thousands of Iranian and Lebanese civilians who met theirs.
Again, the wording is paramount. Words and headlines are powerful and manipulative, and the Western media uses them craftily to mislead and evoke compassion or indifference depending on their framing. They can make the war on Iran appear routine or justified, rather than a contentious and deeply impactful conflict.
For example, headlines such as “Casualties reported in latest Skirmish” focus on statistics rather than individual stories, which can make the tragedy seem less personal and urgent. Phrases like “airstrikes hit military targets in Iran” omits the mention of civilian deaths and frames the event as routine military activity.
Similarly, the headline “Displaced by War, Many Seek Shelter in Beirut” avoids specifying who caused the displacement or the nature of the invasion, thereby sidestepping the issue of accountability. Headlines that use terms like “military intervention” versus “invasion” may influence whether an audience views an action as aggressive or justified reflecting underlying biases that steer public opinion in favour of or against certain sides in a conflict.
The onus is thus on us, the news recipients, to verify the stories we receive by checking various sources and not relying on the mainstream media, which all too often is out to sway us in one way or another.
The writer is a former professor of communication who is based in Vancouver, Canada.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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