1. Ukrainian-Russian War
Many news outlets claimed that Russia's attack was a surprise, and no one was expecting it. On the other hand, international news outlets were covering this planned attack and the buildup for months.
Translation: (Russia-Ukraine: 7 keys to understand the uprising tension on the border of both countries) Published: December 8th, 2021
This BBC Article is talking about how the tension between Russia and Ukraine increased in 2021. We can see that since Russia had placed 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border which led fear rose that there might be an invasion. Moscow kept denying that they were planning to attack. However, Moscow kept demanding to reassure them that NATO would not let Ukraine join, which Western countries denied. This goes back to 2014, when Russia added Crimea and backed up separatists in Ukraine. BBC stated, “The situation remains fragile, with international concern mounting over possible war.”
However, the U.S. reported this war as something that they never saw coming. As a “surprise attack”
(https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/24/europe/ukraine-russia-attack-timeline-intl/index.html)
CNN published this article on the day of the attack (February 24th, 2022), talking about how Russia surprised Ukraine and how nobody knew about the troops they had on the border. Nobody knew how the troops got there, and how long they had been there.
CNN states that before daylight on February 24th, Russian troops made their way that day before the attack, when we know they had sent troops back in 2021, and those troops stayed near the border for the time being.
2. Israel-Palestine War
AP News states that Hamas “surprised attacked” and that Israel had no idea, and they don’t know where they got the reasoning for the attack. “On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a surprise attack from Gaza into Israel during a major Jewish holiday, firing rockets and infiltrating up to 22 locations. Militants killed civilians and soldiers, taking hostages.”
However, AP News and many other news outlets forgot to state how Israel had been slowly attacking Palestine since 2021.
Translation: Israel launches more attacks against Gaza and increases fear of an invasion - Published May 14th, 2021
CNN states that in May 2021, the conflict between Israel and Palestine had increased dramatically due to Israel launching airstrikes on Gaza. They claimed they were targeting Hamas infrastructure, which was a tunnel called “Metro.” Palestinian militants responded, and the violence resulted in at least 119 Palestinians, of whom 31 were children and 19 women. In the results, there were power outages in Gaza, which resulted in damaged electricity networks. Many led that Israel was planning a ground invasion. Israel denied these claims by saying “no troops had entered Gaza, although forces were amassed at the border.” This article shows how not only does the Palestinian-Israeli war go back to 1948, but also that what led up to October 7th wasn’t a surprise attack, as there were many incidents before between both nations.
Media Bias and Why?
You may be wondering why the U.S. portrays the news in a certain way that “favors them” or “makes them look good.” That would be because while these things are real and all of the incidents above are horrible. We need to take into account how the U.S. favors its allies. European nations like Ukraine, Israel, France, the United Kingdom, and many more. “Media bias is influenced by many factors: explicit factors such as geographic location, media position, editorial guideline, topic setting, and so on; obscure factors such as political ideology” (Huang, 2024) This is inferring that there is a lot of things behind the scenes when it comes to media outlets writing headlines and deciding which information goes out or the way it is going to be portrayed.
How can we get better as a society and make sure we are reading and taking in credible information? Well, while it is a major challenge to learn about media bias and its evaluation, since it is highly subjected, since each person has their own different evaluation criteria for bias. For example, something that might be neutral news to you may be left-leaning or right-leaning to someone else. To get better, we need to figure out an unbiased and inclusive way to analyze and get the whole story. Trying to read more news articles and seeing the choice of words and the structure of sentences when writing news articles about international events. (Huang, 2024). So, we, in America, can start watching and keeping an eye on what is happening around us. Foreign relations and politics affect people’s daily lives no matter where they are.