Nick Wilson has been closely monitoring news about the war in Gaza since October. But Wilson, a Cornell University student, is picky when it comes to dealing with the media. As a pro-Palestinian activist, he distrusts major American media coverage of Israeli operations in Gaza.
Instead, he turns to publications with which he is less familiar. There are also some American viewers, such as the Arab news network Al Jazeera.
“Al Jazeera is the site I go to to get an account of events that I think is reliable,” he said.
Many student protesters said in recent interviews that they want local coverage of the Gaza war, often with a staunchly pro-Palestinian perspective, and are turning to alternative media to do so. There are a variety of options, including Jewish Current, The Intercept, Mondo Weiss, and independent Palestinian journalists on social media seeking information about what's happening in Gaza.
Their preferences embody broader changes for members of Gen Z, who increasingly seek news from a wide range of sources and question traditional news outlets in a fragmented media ecosystem.
Israel's recent ban on Al Jazeera locally has only strengthened its standing among many student protesters. Al Jazeera focuses on local reporting, and Al Jazeera has a larger presence in Gaza than any other publication. Students also mentioned the sacrifices they made to tell the story there. Two Al Jazeera journalists have been killed since the war began.
Ben Toff, associate professor of journalism at the University of Minnesota, said, “Al Jazeera seems to be doing its part for many young Americans in terms of getting a different perspective than they feel they're getting from the U.S. media.” It's something,” he said. .
Many Western media outlets, which had few journalists in Gaza before the war, have struggled to gain access to the region, but Al Jazeera is known for its graphic, searing depictions of death and destruction there. It is being A typical news report might feature footage of Israeli tanks entering the city, alongside drone footage of Palestinians fleeing collapsed buildings and homes in Gaza City.
“This is news about the Middle East, but it doesn't really come across from a Western perspective.”,” Said Alina Atiku is a student at the University of South Florida who wants the university to withdraw from Israel.
The Qatari-owned network is headquartered in Doha and operates two separate newsrooms offering content in English and Arabic. The company's mobile app has been downloaded 295,000 times in the U.S. since October, an increase of more than 200 percent from the previous seven months, according to market research firm Appfigures.
Among the media frequently cited by protesters, Al Jazeera English is the most popular on social media. He has 1.9 million followers on TikTok, up from about 750,000 at the start of the war, and 4.6 million on Instagram.
Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab and Gulf States Institute in Washington, said the network's Arabic channels are ostensibly more pro-Palestinian than the English channels, which tend to be more subtle. Stated.
Critics claim the coverage veers toward supporting armed resistance movements against Israel. The Israeli government accused Al Jazeera of acting as a “mouthpiece” for Hamas, and last Sunday seized its broadcasting equipment and suspended its operations in the country for at least 45 days.
Al Jazeera said in a statement that the government's accusations were “baseless,” adding that it broadcast all press conferences held by representatives of the Israeli Cabinet and the Israel Defense Forces, in addition to the Hamas video.
It also said its reporting “offers diverse perspectives, stories and counter-evidence” and that accusations of pro-Palestinian bias “should be scrutinized through a careful analysis of our journalistic standards and reporting practices.” Ta.
The Israeli government's rejection of Al Jazeera appears to have boosted the network's reputation among some students.
“This shows how afraid Israel is of Al Jazeera's reporting and reporting,” said Matthew Vickers, a junior at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Israel.
Protesters have rattled off a list of mainstream US publications, including CNN, The Atlantic and The New York Times, among others, for publishing reporting they find objectionable. While major news outlets have extensively reported on Israel's operations in Gaza, the death toll and damage, reports from the perspective of student protesters suggest that Israel is not fully responsible for the deaths of Palestinians. Israeli officials have not thoroughly verified the facts. And they said coverage of the protests has focused too much on anti-Semitism on college campuses, rather than Islamophobia.
Cameron Jones, a student at Columbia University and an organizer with Jewish Voices for Peace, said, “There is a significant amount of misinformation being fed to us by the mainstream media, and when it comes to the issue of Palestine, there is no clear evidence.'' It's just a prejudice.” pro-Palestinian organization.
Activists' interest in Al Jazeera stands in contrast to the network's past struggles to find an audience in the United States. The network launched an American channel in 2013, but ended it in 2016, with nightly ratings hovering around 30,000 viewers, nowhere near the viewership of cable networks like Fox News and CNN. Ta.
Part of what doomed the network at the time was a “clearly anti-American slant” in its reporting, Aibish wrote in a 2016 guest essay for the Times. But now that it's broadcasting from another country, the network's tone is finding an audience on college campuses, too, he said.
“There's a Third Worldist, anti-imperialist perspective, and that's a mindset that a lot of university students embrace,” he says.
Jeremy W. Peters Contributed to the report.