Stuff's role in the genocide in Gaza
And why it matters so much...
A year and a half ago I wrote to Stuff editor Keith Lynch to correct an opinion piece by their resident rage-baiter Damien Grant. Grant has no journalism background, no talent at writing, and is mostly just known for being a convicted fraudster. But, if there’s one thing Stuff is known for, it’s publishing free crap that will make their readers furious.
Usually Grant’s pieces are just standard ‘please give me attention’ rubbish. Like whining about how he was a virgin until he was in his late thirties or groundbreaking fare like ‘are grocery prices too high’.
You don’t have to have read any of his work to know it. Just imagine the angriest boomer in your local community page. Imagine him typing with one finger, furious, trying to figure out a new way to complain about ‘powerful elites’ from his beach house.
Stuff has always had a model that relies on people writing rage bait for free. It’s how they sell advertising given their dwindling traffic. It’s something most people have just learned to accept.
But it’s something we have to stand against when they’re doing this with topics that matter. When Stuff decide to publish false propaganda about a genocide we have to speak up.
Back in January last year Grant tried to claim that the genocide wasn’t a genocide. He stated incorrectly: “a brief look at similar conflicts show that the casualty level is consistent with other urban conflicts” in a long and boring pick me post. That was only ONE of the inaccurate statements in the piece.
And it was easy to prove this false.
At the time, after only three weeks, the Israeli army had killed more children in Gaza than the number of children killed in all the world’s conflicts over an entire year. As of 22 December 2023, with a death toll of over 10,000 Palestinian children, Tel Aviv has killed more children than the total of all of the world’s wars between 2019 and 2022 (8,174). Don’t believe me? That’s CNN report.
And it was a year and a half ago.
“It's beyond anything that I've seen in my career," Marc Garlasco, a military advisor for the Dutch organization PAX and a former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon, told The New York Times.”
A year and a half ago.
The Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip has been unlike any other in the 21st century a Washington Post investigation found.
A year and a half ago.
1% of the Gaza Strip population killed has been killed in 100 days, ABC News stated.
A year and a half ago.
Grant’s column said the genocide in Gaza isn’t a genocide without even talking about how Israel literally had a case against them for genocide in January 2024.
There are so many, many experts on genocide - there are lawyers, aid workers, international court judges, people who have actually lived in Palestine who could have written a piece on Gaza. Instead Stuff editorial staff left it up to their village idiot.
Lynch responded to people sending him evidence of inaccuracies with - “I'm satisfied that he has met the Media Council standard for opinion articles to have a foundation of fact. That said we will add some extra detail to add context”.
He was wrong. The Press Council upheld complaints. Two months after publishing the piece they finally issued a correction. Then quietly removed it (while maintaining that they didn’t - but it’s nowhere to be found). This is a cowardly and pathetic way to operate.
It’s also called manufacturing consent.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky that is depressingly fitting still.
It states, in “opinion columns, we would anticipate sharp restraints on the range of opinion allowed expression. Our hypothesis is that worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanised, and that their victimisation will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotion. In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanisation, and little context that will excite and enrage”.
The goal isn’t just to ‘excite and enrage’, it’s to get you to accept that this genocide is different. It’s not really a genocide. And if you think it is a genocide (but it isn’t because ummm Hamas or something) then don’t you care about these other people facing occupiers and genocide I mean not that Israel are occupiers I mean did I say Hamas?
Whataboutism is rife.
Then there’s an appeal to leave emotion at the door - be sensible! Be logical. Yes, maybe you could say they’ve slaughtered so many innocent people and literally set journalists on fire but if you look at this without thinking about that then you will see it’s not a genocide. Because Hamas.
And it’s complicated! Too complicated for you to understand (but not too complicated for someone who can’t even commit fraud without being caught to understand).
Actually you know it’s anti-semitic to care about Palestinians? But you won’t see them referred to as Palestinians. Oh no. Every infant, every child, every teenager, every adult is Hamas.
It’s endless and exhausting and it’s a specific tactic.
Assal Rad is a scholar of modern Middle Eastern history and a non-resident fellow at DAWN, she has studied the way western media manufactures consent for global atrocities. And since the start of the genocide Rad has documented the mainstream Western media's role in Israel's genocide in Gaza.
“Rather than challenging statements from the Israeli government and military, or the U.S. government which repeats without question whatever Israeli officials say, mainstream Western media has largely acted like stenographers of state-run media,” she says.
“In headline after headline, Western outlets have repeatedly failed to mention Israel at all when reporting death tolls from airstrikes in Gaza and Lebanon; used passive voice when attacks are actually attributed to Israel; cast doubt when Palestinians are killed; and dehumanised Palestinians with subtle differences in word choice used to describe Israelis.”
“In many cases, significant stories from Gaza are not reported or barely mentioned at all, and coverage is lacking to show the daily toll on Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza. The U.N.'s report concluding that Israel's actions were consistent with genocide received almost no coverage by Western outlets. In other cases, like the deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza—a clear war crime—the media does not attribute it to Israeli policies and actions.”
Back in 2008 when Israel attacked Gaza killing thousands of Palestinians and making more than 100,000 Palestinians homeless, one of my jobs was to edit AP copy. I grew up understanding Christian Zionism well. I even had a Hebrew name! But editing photos from that attack changed me. I could suddenly see that AP copy didn’t match what the images showed.
Why were there so many dead children? Why were there so many mothers, pregnant bellies ripped to shreds? Why were there whole families shot in the head? Why was the death toll for Israel 13 - all soldiers - but the death toll of Palestinian civilians was unknown? I never saw any images of Palestinians with guns. I never saw any Palestinians who could reasonably be viewed as soldiers.
And yet, we never ever printed those photos. Ever.
It was always hidden. I thought then - if people could just see these photos, everything would change.
And that’s what we are seeing now. When I protested in 2009 for the slaughter to end, there was maybe four of us there. Now, thousands protest every weekend. Because you can’t hide the truth when it’s right in front of you. You can’t explain away all the bodies. You can’t explain the videos of the Israeli Occupation Forces using Palestinian children as target practice.
Still, our media is complicit. This week they have printed another ill informed piece by this person who even in the face of everything we can see clearly is claiming there isn’t a genocide.
Without any evidence he again claims the incredibly low death toll estimate cannot be relied on. Though never questions why Israel cannot name how many civilians they’ve killed. Nor does he talk about The Lancet Paper which he knows about:
By June 19, 2024, 37 396 people had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.1 The Ministry's figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services,2 the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry,3 which found claims of data fabrication implausible.4
Even Israeli intelligence admits the Gaza death toll from ‘Hamas’ is accurate. But who cares right? Stuff definitely doesn’t.
They’ll claim their second piece of propaganda by Grant is in ‘response’ to one opinion piece by Phil Goff. But really, we know what this is. It’s manufacturing consent for genocide.
And Stuff is complicit. Keith Lynch knows the piece is incorrect and is excusing genocide. The editorial board at Stuff knows too.
And you know what? We will remember this.
Award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad’s words should always be in our minds: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
He said this three weeks into the genocide.
It’s so awesome you’ve documented this. As Owen Jones says, ‘Keep receipts’ everyone. Karyn Elizabeth has done some great work on 1News and RNZ.
They, Stuff and NZH have without a doubt manufactured consent for genocide.
This is a great speech by Owen Jones about the coming ‘reckoning’:
https://youtu.be/iQ9SQokMSOw?si=lXe4Jw41-G5P7k5J
Emily - thank you for your blunt and accurate response to Damien Grant’s appalling column. It is such irresponsible ‘journalistic’ oversight by Stuff that I will follow up on. Your column has prompted me to subscribe. Thank you for your persistent voice for truth, justice and Gazans (amongst other things), and on other matters, your wit, and humour.