Don't Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent | Dr Assal Rad

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Dr. Assal Rad is a Middle East historian known as the “headline fixer” for her viral media corrections. Her new book, Don’t Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide, examines how outlets including The New York Times and the BBC helped manufacture consent for Israel’s genocide in Gaza through language, framing and omission.

In this conversation, Assal joins Muhammad Jalal to examine how Western media has reported on Palestine, Israel and Gaza, and what that reporting reveals about the relationship between journalism, political power and public consent.

From passive language around Palestinian deaths to the treatment of Israeli military claims, the discussion looks at how headlines and editorial choices can shape the way audiences understand war.

As tensions involving the United States, Iran and the wider Middle East remain at the centre of global politics, we also ask whether Western media can still manufacture support for war in the way it did before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The conversation explores Gaza, the killing of Palestinian journalists, declining trust in mainstream media, the rise of social media and citizen journalism, and the different ways the Biden and Trump administrations have approached Israel and the Middle East.

Has Gaza permanently changed the way people consume the news? And what happens when audiences can compare what they see on their phones with what appears in the headlines?

Dr. Assal Rad is the author of The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran and Don’t Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide.

Find Assal Rad here: