May 7, 2026: The October 7th Narrative and the Unmasking of Mainstream Media
Featuring Robin Andersen, author of "The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza."
Join Madhuri Sastry and Bhakti Shringarpure for a live recording of It’s Not You, It’s The Media with guest Robin Andersen, author of The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. (OR Books, 2025).
Buy the book here.
Event will be livestreamed on Substack, YouTube and X on May 7, 2026 at 1pm EST. Set a reminder below to join.
About the book
This vitally necessary and carefully researched book examines the way US establishment media ran interference for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, aligning its coverage with Israeli military narratives whilst downplaying, and even condoning, the wholesale massacre of Palestinians. Commencing with the October 7, 2023, attack, The Complicit Lens scrutinizes mainstream journalism, contrasting it with social media reports and international news coverage. It reveals how legacy media presented Israeli violence as defensive and justified, casting doubt on IDF bombings, employing passive language to deflect blame for atrocities, and repeating Israeli talking points, often word-for-word. Andersen documents the targeting of journalists and aid workers in what has become the deadliest conflict for each on record. She spotlights the editorial censorship that prohibited the use of terms such as “genocide” and “massacre” in the reporting of Palestinian deaths. And, as global protests against the Gaza genocide gathered strength, she examines the hostile media portrayal of these uprisings, particularly those led by young people and Jewish organizations. (Co-published with the Institute for Palestine Studies).
About the author
Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others.
Listen to previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.radicalbookscollective.com/s/its-not-you-its-the-media
Watch previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLstXMEF0r05bhdfv7yCt5V2KXTdK4cO5F
Too much of ‘journalism’ — from both right-wing and left-wing news media — is motivated more by a paycheck and publication (‘a buck and a byline’) rather than a genuine strive to challenge the big and bad powers that be: To truly comfort the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable in an increasingly unjust global existence. Mainstream news-media have been editorially emasculated thus negligent, however much it may be due to orders from ownership headquarters and therefore beyond their control.
Such journalism’s traditional function may also be subtly changing. The adage-description of journalism’s fundamental function can remain the same, but revision of terminological representation is definitely in order. While it remains “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” there may be an alteration to what/who constitutes an “afflicted” and “the comfortable”.
As a good contemporary example, the new “afflicted” requiring news-media comforting includes the Israeli government and IDF in their systematic mass starvation and/or largescale slaughter of Gazan innocents when in the past it would've been more likely (and rightly) the Palestinian civilians or non-combatants, as the latter resist having their ancestral lands gradually annexed and being cleansed from it [perhaps like a new David versus Goliath?].
Also, over decades I’ve heard of too many cases of employees not standing up and doing what is necessary for the public and/or human(e) good, instead excusing themselves with something like: ‘I need this job — I have a family to support’. I have to say that such familial obligation status does not actually ethically or morally justify their willing involvement — unless, of course, they were actually forced into coupling and copulating with intent to procreate.
Quite frankly, journalists/editors with genuine integrity should tender their resignations and even publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s media product, whether it involves self-censored or missing coverage of a brutally lopsided foreign war or that of domestic corporate corruption that will harm the populace.
Instead, the MSM's distortion and diversion continues. ... What astonishes me, though, is how such news-media professionals can afterwards sleep at night or look their little children/grandchildren in the face everyday?!