When Journalism Becomes Propaganda

For months, some of the world’s most powerful media outlets have filled their front pages and news feeds with stark photographs from Gaza, featuring skeletal children and parents holding frail bodies, as proof of famine induced by Israel. But as The Free Press has revealed, much of this imagery has been stripped of critical context. And when that context finally surfaces, it is quietly buried in corrections or addendums that never catch up to the original impact.

The truth is disturbing, but not in the way those front pages implied. Many of the children presented as victims of starvation were already suffering from serious illnesses — cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, rickets, traumatic brain injuries — that explained their emaciated condition. Yet The New York Times, CNN, NPR, The Guardia