How have Dutch news media reported on Israel, Gaza and the Palestinians over the past three years? This was investigated by Nel Ruigrok (media scholar and lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Coen Ramaer (journalist) and a team of students from the Master’s programme in Media and Journalism at Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication. They analysed 17,000 articles from seven major news organisations and conducted interviews with 37 journalists. The results, which have been published in Trouw and De Groene Amsterdammer, reveal asymmetrical coverage favouring Israel.
Ruigrok and her team analysed news articles from NOS, NRC, Volkskrant, De Telegraaf, Nu.nl, Trouw and Algemeen Dagblad (AD) between 7 October 2023 and February 2026. Their analysis revealed that Israeli sources were quoted one and a half times more often than Palestinian ones. The differences between media outlets are particularly marked. For example, Trouw is the only newspaper that gave Palestinians a voice more often. De Telegraaf, on the other hand, quoted Israelis twice as often.
Language use
The team also examined the language used by journalists in their reporting. Using a language model (ChatGPT), they selected 2,000 random passages in which a source was quoted or paraphrased. The researchers reviewed these passages and coded who was named as the acting party, how assertive a statement was, and whether mitigating language was used.
Words such as ‘is’, ‘proves’ and ‘certainly’ occurred three times more frequently in Israeli sources, whilst Palestinian sources were represented by words such as ‘would’, ‘seems’ and ‘possibly’. In the case of Palestinian sources, violence was described in mitigating terms 2.5 times more often than in Israeli sources, such as the use of ‘neutralised’ instead of ‘killed’. Almost all editorial teams acknowledge the asymmetry in the sources consulted in their written responses. They cite the inaccessibility of Gaza as a major cause.
Suffering
Using another language model (Claude), the researchers examined whose suffering was the focus of the headlines: was Israeli suffering emphasised, Palestinian suffering, both, or neither? The researchers only allowed the model to make this classification after it had been established that it coded in a similar way to them. These results were compared with the death toll, based on figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health as reported to the UN, and for Israel on figures from Reuters and the Israeli army. What is striking is that journalistic attention to Palestinian suffering did not increase as the death toll rose. Whether there were nine hundred or nine thousand deaths in a month, the number of articles with a headline referring to Palestinian suffering remained virtually constant.
Genocide
The use of the word ‘genocide’ is clearly a sensitive issue and led to a heated debate. Shortly after 7 October 2023, the term was scarcely used by journalists; by early 2024, it appeared in 15 percent of articles. It was only when the UN and Amnesty International labelled the situation as genocide that the tone changed. Throughout the entire period, the word almost never appeared in a headline or lead.
Personal interviews
The research team approached 78 journalists and spoke at length with 37 of them about how they view their outlet’s coverage in retrospect. Respondents who were satisfied with the ‘balance’, ‘objectivity’ and ‘factual accuracy’ of the reporting are often older and predominantly male. Colleagues who are dissatisfied with the way their outlet handled the coverage, particularly in the early stages, are generally considerably younger, more often female and more diverse in terms of background. At least twelve journalists have since left the media organisation for which they worked. These are invariably journalists who felt that their organisation was not critical enough of Israel. Conversely, Ruigrok found no journalists who left an organisation because they felt it gave too much prominence to the Palestinian perspective.
Both satisfied and dissatisfied journalists acknowledge that there is an internal divide within newsrooms. The older generation often views the younger generation as being too emotional or activist-minded, whilst the younger generation feels that the older generation is blind to its own prejudices and is reluctant to accept criticism or engage in self-reflection. As a result, the Israeli narrative is much more readily accepted than the Palestinian one.
A key difference lies in how the various groups of journalists view their approach to journalism; there is a clear difference in their understanding of their role. The group of journalists who are satisfied with the coverage describe their remit as ‘keeping their distance’, working with a ‘cool head’ and ‘exercising caution’. And they believe that their media outlet has succeeded in this regard.
On the other hand, the dissatisfied journalists reject the idea of balance and believe that their editors-in-chief pay too much attention to public opinion. They would have preferred to see their newspaper playing a pioneering role and emphasise the need to hold those in power to account and to give a voice to those who find it difficult to make themselves heard.
Propaganda machine
According to journalists, Israel’s propaganda machine is also at work. Reporters from the NOS, for example, describe how, for a time, every article prompted a response from the CIDI, the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel. Baldwin Van Gorp, professor of journalism and communication management at KU Leuven, one of the experts who commented on the study, says: ‘I think your data analysis and interviews show that there is an asymmetry in Israel’s favour. So Israel has indeed managed to steer the news coverage somewhat in its favour.’
After 7 October 2023, there was a great deal of sympathy for Israel in many newsrooms. However, almost all journalists report that this sympathy faded into the background as the conflict progressed. But has this shift proved significant enough? This cannot be viewed in isolation from ‘one’s stance on the conflict’. ‘There is no objective yardstick against which you can measure the reporting,’ according to Frank Harbers, an associate professor at the University of Groningen who conducts research into journalism and is also one of the experts who commented on the study. ‘So you really need to ground your conclusions firmly in a discussion about how difficult it is to practise value-free journalism.’
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This article is based on news reports from Trouw and De Groene Amsterdammer.
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