How the fog of war puts journalism in the frame

Detailed summary

We studied media reporting on two conflicts. And we found two very different stories.

Since the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, and during Israel’s now three-year-long retaliation against Gaza, journalism’s traditional commitment to objectivity has been on trial.

Reporting on the Israel–Gaza war has been characterised, on social media as much as in the conservative media, as biased one way or the other.

Headlines have been parsed and corrected by social media warriors while a war of words between new journalism players and traditional media has been loud and often angry. This clash has emphasised the tension between the objective reporting claimed to be practiced by legacy media and advocacy-oriented reporting that internet journalists believe delivers more truth.

In contrast, the Russian military attack on Ukraine has been reported with milder popular criticism. The privileging of one side’s narrative over the other in this conflict appears not to have attracted the same claims of media bias.

Numerous studies have shown trust declines when audiences perceive journalism to be advocating for one position over another. In addition, they have a marked preference for news that incorporates a range of views.

This led the Centre for Media Transition to examine the way Australian media have framed both international conflicts.

We sought to understand if particular narratives have been privileged over others and if so, how. It is a normal part of the reporting process for journalists to decide what information to include, omit, emphasise, and contextualise in order to report a story. This framing process allows journalists to make some narratives more dominant and decide what sources are used to support them.

On top of framing there is journalistic voice. Despite the best efforts of a reporter to achieve objectivity, this can often be evaluative or subjective.

We examined the framing choices made by The Australian, the ABC, 9News.com.au, and The Guardian across the two conflicts when the events being reported were significant in the news cycle.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Conversation AU. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.