As Israel continues to wage its genocidal war against Gaza, a fault line in American society becomes increasingly pronounced. College students are challenging the political establishment on college campuses across the country.
One side opposes US support for Israel and exploration of investment in the arms industries, while the other supports the Israeli offensive and has urged police action to dismantle student protest camps.
This fault line reflects not only the growing intergenerational tensions in US society, but also the way the media approaches coverage of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Pro-Israel advocates in the US have attempted to draw media attention to alleged widespread anti-Semitic activity and disturbing violence at university protests.
This maneuver has two objectives: to divert attention from the discussion of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians supported by the US and to silence pro-Palestinian voices, making criticism of Israel an anti-Semitic act punishable by law.
The evidence for the charges against the student protesters is scant. However, the mainstream media gave them a lot of airtime and space on the front page. As a result, those who oppose or support the Israeli war in Gaza now debate primarily the role of universities, the spread of anti-Semitism, and how the state and society should address both.
But the way the mainstream media covered the university protests is just one aspect of the story. The media itself, like society, is fragmented and polarized. In fact, we should talk about three media outlets: the mainstream media outlets that constantly lose publicity and audience and largely reflect the opinions of the US and Israeli governments; the aggressive independent and progressive media that challenges dominant opinions but struggles to remain financially viable; and the kaleidoscopic world of social media that dominates young audiences under 30.
The Israeli war in Gaza made clear how consumption of these three different segments of media is linked to age groups and ideological sentiments. In other words, different media outlets serve different sides of the intergenerational divide.
Surveys have consistently revealed a correlation between age and different political opinions, with young people being more critical of the war and supportive of the Palestinians than older people.
A February survey by Pew Research showed that among Americans aged 65 and over, 47 percent were more likely to sympathize with Israelis and just 9 percent with Palestinians. Among young Americans under 30, one-third support the Palestinians, while 14 percent support Israel.
A staggering 60 percent of adults under 30 view Palestinians positively, while 46 percent – Israelis. Older Americans tend to view Israelis more positively than Palestinians.
Age also appears to determine the pattern of media consumption. An April survey conducted by JL Partners showed that 59% of young people receive news on social media; the same percentage of people aged 65 and over rely on major television and cable channels.
People who get their news primarily from mainstream TV and cable channels “are more supportive of Israel’s war effort, less likely to think Israel is committing war crimes, and less interested in war in general,” journalist Ryan Grim wrote in progressive media outlet The Interceptar.
But Americans who turn to social media, podcasts and YouTube “generally side with the Palestinians, believe that Israel is committing war crimes and genocide and consider the issue to be of significant importance,” he concluded.
Americans who rely on social media see more stories and videos about the serious impact of Israel’s war on Gaza, which presumably increases their concern about U.S. involvement in it. No wonder students are protesting the war so vehemently, demanding that their universities divest from companies that feed the Israeli military and cut ties with Israeli academic institutions.
Such demands challenge government policy and traditional pro-Israel groups, especially the elderly conservative political elite. This explains why Congress and President Joe Biden reacted so quickly against the student protests and, using the media, tried to smear them with accusations of anti-Semitism.
Young Americans are less dependent on mainstream media than their parents, in large part because they see and feel its distortions, biases and gaps in reporting.
A good example of mainstream media bias can be seen in a recent analysis by Marc Owen Jones, a pioneering researcher into digital disinformation. Their analysis of 100 New York Times articles about protests on US campuses, published in April and early May, showed that the reports heavily emphasized equating the protests with anti-Semitism.
He also found that the terms “antisemitism” and “antisemitic” appeared 296 times, while terms like “Islamophobia” and “Islamophobic” only appeared nine times, despite the fact that both antisemitism and Islamophobia were rising.
Additionally, a March analysis of New York Times reporting on the war by the monitoring group newyorkwarcrimes.com has similar findings. He also identified major disparities in the sources of the newspaper’s reporting on Palestine, which cited Israeli and American sources “more than three times as often as Palestinian ones.” When examining just official quotes, he found that “quotes from Israeli and American officials outnumber Palestinian ones by nine to one.”
We shouldn’t be surprised that young Americans live in a different world than the media, while older Americans fight hard to maintain the old world that continues to generate wars around the world. Most importantly, these trends have been evolving in the same direction for many years, and so portend continued polarization in society, along with growing support for Palestinian rights and a balanced US stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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