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[–] 238 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Normally you’d say she was killed by the IDF, or Israel shot and killed an American.

Instead the media makes strong use of passive voice:

Witnesses say Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was fired at by Israel Defense Forces soldiers positioned in a nearby field

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  • [–] 96 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The news loves to focus on individual Israeli hostages and victims by providing backgrounds and what they do for a living, but for the most part just lists Palestinian deaths by numbers and only occasionally includes names or family relationships.

    There is one news agency, I think the BBC, which used the phrase "unprecedented attack" to refer to the Oct atrocity that kicked off the current hostilities but doesn't use any similar phrasing for the IDF killing many times more civilians as a response. So apparently genocide doesn't need called out in a similar fashion because it is apparently not unprecedented.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I mean. "she was killed by the IDF" is passive voice, no? I think IDF is out of control as much as the next person but passive voice can be communicative and clear as much as active voice. And clearly it's easy to reach for if you gave it as a counter example accidentally.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    The problem is not that they use the passive voice, it's that they use the passive voice systematically for one side and the active for the other. It's always "Hamas kills" versus "shot dead by the IDF", and usually the "by the IDF" part is buried in the article instead of the headline.

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