Dear Daily Northwestern Editorial Board,

I have just finished reading your news report on Sunday night’s Students for Justice in Palestine-sponsored “vigil” and, as a Medill alumnus and working journalist who manages a global newsroom, I was surprised not just about what you DID report, but about what you chose NOT to report.

One key part of the training I provide for correspondents who work for me is making sure that they add context to news reports, so the reader can place the news event within a proper frame of reference. That way, we are not simply a mouthpiece for any group with a computer and an agenda, but a true news organization that seeks to report the facts, fully and objectively. Not only does The Daily’s Oct. 7 report lack context, it suggested that the terrorists who attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and their Iranian backers, bear no responsibility for the loss of any lives remembered at last night’s “vigil” and that Israel is entirely to blame for those lives lost; In other words, the “report” is anti-Israel propaganda.

Here is just some of the important context that was omitted:

1. The event occurred one day short of the one-year anniversary of the date on which Hamas/Palestinian terrorists invaded a sovereign nation, Israel, killed 1,200 innocent civilians and took about 255 others hostage (including the elderly, the infirm, children and babies), while raping and desecrating the bodies of women in the process. Your report neglected to mention Oct. 7 at all as the triggering event, simply referencing that it was held “almost one year to the day” after the war began.
2. Hamas continues to hold more than 100 people — including four Americans — hostage. Yet your report contains no mention of hostages, which triggered Israel’s invasion in an attempt to rescue these innocents and prevent Hamas from launching additional terrorist attacks on Israel. Given this complete lack of context, your report makes it seem like Israel attacked Gaza for no reason at all, and simply set out to murder civilians. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, there is no way your readers would know that from your article.
3. The report quotes the Gaza Ministry of Health death count, without acknowledging that some of the dead were Hamas terrorists. Israel reports having killed at least 20,000 terrorist fighters. Additionally, instead of referring to Hamas as a “designated terrorist organization,” the name given by the U.S. government, the report simply refers to Hamas as a “militant group,” while conveniently omitting that Hamas has ruled over Gaza since 2007. It is the duly-elected government of Gaza, not just some rogue group, an inconvenient fact your report fails to mention.
4. Your report mentions that the “vigil” memorialized Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Nowhere did your article include for context the fact that Nasrallah had vowed not only to wipe Israel off the map, but also to kill all Jews. It is, in my opinion, blasphemous to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, over the death of a terrorist who had vowed to kill Jews. It would be akin to reciting the Kaddish for the Palestinian terrorists who murdered 11 Jews at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
5. You mentioned that the conflict “has escalated” in recent weeks, with Israeli attacks along the Lebanese border and in Syria. Yet nowhere does your article report that in the past year, Hezbollah has launched more than 8,000 rockets from Lebanese territory directed at Israeli civilians, including some that killed innocent civilians. Again, you simply reported the propaganda that the organizers of the event fed you, without any question or context.
6. By omission, you did not report the direct attacks on Israel by Iran — not just by its proxies Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah — which has launched hundreds of rockets, missiles and drones against Israeli civilian targets as recently as last month. From your reporting, one would get the impression that Israel is simply a warmongering country, bent on destroying its neighbors. Again, this Iranian propaganda has no place in any American college newspaper, let alone one at Northwestern.
7. Usually, news reports provide reactions to news events, including from those who have a different take on the events reported. Your article made no attempt to present such reactions. Had you spoken with anyone on campus who supports Israel — and I assure you there are hundreds if not thousands at Northwestern — you would have gotten a different take, as well as the sorely needed context that I have attempted to provide in this letter.

Bottom line, you simply reported what SJP said as the truth. For any newspaper, even a college newspaper, that is a cardinal offense.

Sincerely,
Stuart Gibson

Stuart Gibson is an alum of the Medill School of Journalism, Class of 1973. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.