Witnessing the War on Words in Journalism 📝
my thoughts on censorship & accountability - welcome back to The Slush Pile!
Over the past seven months, I have been at a loss for words, which is ironic for someone in my profession. As a journalist, we’re supposed to have all the right information and all the right words to say. And yet it seems to me that my journalist colleagues are only growing more creative with theirs as Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Palestine rages on, which has so far killed over 34,000 Palestinians. Or, as said by writers at outlets like the New York Times and The Spectator Index, has resulted in a sudden, mass, unexplained end of life of people who just dropped dead for no reason. *shrug*
Over the past seven months, I’ve only grown more frustrated, infuriated, and angry, trying to figure out why many of my journalist colleagues refuse to take a stand. How they sleep at night knowing they are complicit in pro-Israel bias in Western media, complicit in misinforming the public and allowing Western powers to enact violence, complicit in murder, complicit in the genocide as a whole. Is our job not to tell the truth? To state things as they are? To present the facts rather than what we want people to believe? Are we not responsible for shaping how our readers understand the world?
Of course, according to Western journalists, what’s happening right now in Palestine, what’s been happening since October 2023, is not a genocide. It’s a “war.” It’s a “humanitarian conflict.” Six-year-old girls are actually “women.” Vehicles and homes are “randomly” hit by stray bombs. People are “found” dead. Violence, death, destruction, and carnage just happens and no one seems to be able to find a cause, a reason, or a perpetrator.
Words are important. Words matter. Words carry meaning and purpose and power. As journalists and as writers, we should know that better than anyone. Even at the most basic level, we know that a single word can make all the difference between a novel and a book. A school and a university. A child and an adult. So why are we so willing to use language that likens genocide to war, a bomb attack to self-defense (against what exactly, has yet to be explained by anyone), all in order to intentionally and knowingly deflect blame from Israel and its crimes? Is the West really that beholden to Israel that anything they do can be met with impunity and silence? Why are we so afraid to hold Israel accountable and censor the truth from our own citizens?
In reality, I know there are a lot of reasons for this, albeit none of them good ones. The U.S. government may hide behind the fact that, besides Israel, we are home to the largest population of Jewish people in the world (perhaps in an effort to equate Zionism with Judaism) but it’s actually more simple than that. Israel and the U.S. government have always had a strong back-and-forth relationship, exchanging money, intelligence, and military and surveillance tech to ensure each country remains in power. U.S. cops have trained in Israel through exchange programs to learn the best tactics and techniques to control and kill our constituents. We taught Israel everything we know about oppression and colonialism, how to dehumanize a people, how to violently settle their land, how to prevent survival, how to enact repressive policies against the most vulnerable populations. So it’s no wonder that we would encourage a newer country to do the same to a different group of people. Why would we hold another country accountable when we can’t even acknowledge or fess up to our own war crimes? We’ve bombed our own cities so why would we care if another country does the same thing to a land they too have colonized?
So it makes sense that U.S. media would take a similar cue and, if not report on the atrocities that Israel has done, then frame it in a way that not only absolves them of responsibility and accountability, but also misleads the American public into believing and trusting that whatever our taxes are being used for in this genocide is justifiable—which, to be honest, should be considered a crime in itself.
And to be clear, I’m not saying anything of this as merely an outside observer who just happens to notice these things happening. I’ve seen this happen to colleagues of mine and it’s also happened to me, where our original wording in an article was deliberately manipulated by our editors to reflect a more “politically neutral” stance. Multiple times, I’ve had to fight for editors to keep in the word “genocide” to describe what’s happening. I’ve had editors remove it or change it to “war” without my permission or knowledge. I’ve had editors try to stop me from describing Israel as a settler-colonial state. I’ve had to provide links, evidence, and proof every time I want to hold Israel accountable for anything, not just in this current genocide but throughout their history, more than I would deem necessary. Other times, our editors have refused to publicize our work on social media for fear of backlash and harassment, let alone include us in those decisions.
I’ve become disillusioned with how this industry works because it’s also becoming clear to me that any journalist with a backbone is faced with resistance and challenge from higher-ups. We’re gaslit into believing that we’re in the wrong, that naming this a genocide isn’t a factual statement, that we’re the ones making a scene and making trouble just because we refuse to comply with pro-Israel bias, refuse to go along with the status quo journalists before us have created, and refuse to be complicit in more U.S.-driven lies. There is a war happening but it’s not happening in Palestine; it’s happening here on U.S. soil, in journalism rooms across the country, against the words we need to use, between journalists with integrity and newsrooms with agendas, between bias and fact.
For me, however, the worst part is that in addition to targeting innocent civilians, the majority of whom are children, Israel has also intentionally murdered journalists documenting the wreckage, carnage, and destruction that the IDF has inflicted on Palestine. Over 75% of journalists in Palestine were killed in 2023 alone—which, if you didn’t know, goes explicitly against international humanitarian law. They were murdered for doing their jobs, for doing what the rest of us could never do and exposing the depth of Israel’s crimes against humanity.
And the thing that gets me is that U.S. journalists deny them respect and dignity even in death. Refusing to name their murderers in the news reports. Refusing to place blame and use the right words to describe what happened to them, despite the fact that they’re our colleagues. They share our job title. They gave up their lives so they could show the world what was happening, and we can’t even tell the truth about how they died.
Maybe one word in a headline might not make all that much difference in the grand scheme of things. Israel will continue inflicting the worst horrors beyond what any of us could imagine. They will continue to get away with murder, with bombings, with air strikes, with forced starvation. But it’s always been my belief that resistance starts with the right words. With whisperings. With a deep rumbling. With exchanges behind the scenes. Then, movements start. Fires catch and we are responsible for what happens next. For overthrowing the systems that oppress us. For documenting what really happened. Because if we can’t tell the truth, who will?
notes from the writer’s desk ✍️
my favorite recently pub’d pieces:
updates:
Next month, I’ll be hosting my first-ever vendor market and community social, Camp Queer! This is a one-day queer-themed, adult "summer camp" with vendors, food, arts and crafts, board games, a photo booth, and campfire-style open mic and live music. Dress up in your camp-best and celebrate Pride Month with us! Buy tickets here!
I’m so excited to announce the upcoming publication of my debut children’s book!! The book will spotlight past and present queer heroes from Latin America and the U.S. and is forthcoming from Jessica Kingsley Publishers. More info and details to come soon! In the meantime, please read this thread I wrote about the project.
resources:
Looking for book recommendations? Check out my Bookstagram and TikTok to keep up with what I’m reading and loving right now! On TikTok, you’ll also get more snippets of my everyday writing life and lifestyle/fashion content. See you there!
other stories i’m loving 📖
currently reading:
The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
currently watching:
Phineas and Ferb S2
currently listening to:
“Sweet Love” by Anita Baker
all my love,
sofía xx