Five of the six media outlets analyzed do not meet the minimum theses put forward in a study for the CLACSO and Canal Red diploma on media
In Germany today, as in many mediatized societies, our worldview is filtered through the media. But the media are not simply mirrors of reality. They are actors embedded in power structures, shaping what counts as truth, what can be said, and what must remain unspoken. As Herman and Chomsky taught decades ago, the media manufacture consent. And in the German case, when it comes to Palestine, that consent has for years helped consolidate Israel’s central objective: to secure as much land as possible with as few Palestinians as possible.
Germany is not a neutral player here. Its historical role in the rise of Zionism, its guilt over the Holocaust, its deep economic ties, and its military collaboration with Israel all form the background against which media coverage unfolds. What Forensic Architecture has exposed about weapons, or what scholars like Khalidi and Pappé have documented about ethnic cleansing, cannot be separated from the way Bild, Die Welt, ZDF, Deutsche Welle or taz choose to frame events. Media narratives are not decoration; they are part of the apparatus that allows occupation, apartheid, and now genocide to continue.
The past twelve months have made this clearer than ever. In that short time, German society has shifted: a majority no longer supports Israel’s “interventions.” Polls from Bertelsmann Stiftung, Reuters, and even Anadolu Agency show a collapse of support for Netanyahu’s war in Gaza. Yet state policy has not moved. Germany still shields Israel diplomatically, still pumps resources into its economy, and only announced a limited arms embargo once Netanyahu himself declared an indefinite occupation of Gaza, opening the door to the expulsion of much of its population. Even after the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide and demanded all states act to prevent it, Berlin’s position remained essentially intact. The contradiction is glaring: if society no longer consents, why does the state continue? The answer is that media consent has already been manufactured, and that consent protects policy from democratic accountability.
Consider how the “Palestinian question” is covered across Germany’s main outlets. In Bild, the Nakba is erased. Instead of naming 1948 as the ethnic cleansing it was, the paper speaks of “war” and of Arabs attacking Israel “on the day of its birth.” Palestinian demonstrations today are reported as riots of “Israel-haters.” October 7 is Germany’s new emotional anchor: Israel’s 9/11, a Holocaust repeated. With this framing, history is cut into pieces. The continuity of occupation vanishes, the causes are erased, and Palestinians are stripped of their political demands. The manipulation is textbook: distraction, emotional exploitation, silencing.
Die Welt operates with the same logic, though with less tabloid frenzy. Its stories stress police vigilance over speech, warn about antisemitism, and echo official statements from Netanyahu’s government. Once again, Palestinian voices are absent. ZDF and Deutsche Welle give the appearance of balance—some coverage of Gaza, some mention of Palestinian suffering—but when the narrative is tallied, it is Israeli voices that dominate. DW explains the Nakba as mere “flight” or “expulsion,” neutralizing its colonial violence. ZDF personalizes Israeli pain but omits the structural context of blockade and occupation. Both fall back on Germany’s emotional grammar: Holocaust comparisons, antisemitism as the prism for every debate.
Taz, a member-supported outlet with a reputation for dissent, performs somewhat better. It acknowledges the Nakba, criticizes Israel’s policies, and sometimes contextualizes October 7. But it still dilutes Palestinian demands, framing Hamas as the main source of violence and rarely addressing the colonial roots of the conflict. Its reporting tends to flatten history into events: clashes, protests, incidents—rather than processes of occupation and apartheid. In effect, even Taz remains caught within the gravitational pull of mainstream German discourse.
Only Junge Welt consistently breaks the mold. It speaks of settler colonialism, names ethnic cleansing, and places Palestine within the frameworks of international law and global justice. No wonder, then, that Junge Welt is under surveillance by the German state, dismissed as “left-wing extremist.” The paradox is brutal: the one outlet that aligns with UN rapporteurs, with Amnesty International, with the findings of the International Court of Justice, is marginalized and criminalized, while those that recycle Israeli propaganda retain legitimacy, funding, and mass readership.
This is not accidental. It is how consent is produced in Germany. The techniques are the same Chomsky identified decades ago: keep the public ignorant, create emotional diversions, frame the debate within ethnic binaries instead of colonial structures, and criminalize dissent. The tables of analysis make this stark: Bild and Welt scoring maximum distance from reality; DW and ZDF slightly better but still failing to historicize; Taz caught in contradiction; Junge Welt alone refusing to play the game.
What this reveals is more than a media failure. It is a moral crisis. Germany invokes Nie wieder, “Never again,” as a national creed. But the phrase has been hollowed out, turned into a selective weapon. “Never again” for Jews, but not for Palestinians. “Never again” to prevent criticism of Israel, but not to prevent genocide in Gaza. The universal principle has been converted into a particularist shield, justifying silence in the face of atrocities.
If journalism means anything, it must mean the courage to audit power and give voice to the silenced. German journalism, with rare exceptions, has abdicated that duty. Instead of scrutinizing state complicity, it manufactures consent for impunity. Instead of amplifying Palestinian voices, it erases them. Instead of confronting history, it distorts it.
There is still time to change course. The media can, if they choose, tell the truth. They can document the Nakba not as a past tragedy but as a continuing process of dispossession. They can report Palestinian demands not as antisemitic threats but as claims rooted in international law: the right of return, the end of occupation, equality in a single democratic state. They can speak of colonialism, apartheid, and genocide without euphemism.
And Germany, if it is to honor its historical responsibility, must also change. It must stop exporting weapons, stop vetoing sanctions, stop criminalizing solidarity. It must embrace a new Nie wieder—one that is not performative, not selective, not tied to state power, but universal. A Never again that applies to all peoples, in all places, at all times.
The struggle for Palestine is not only a struggle for one land or one people. It is a struggle for the possibility of truth itself, for the possibility that journalism can once again be a tool of emancipation rather than propaganda. It is a struggle for global justice. And as long as German media continue to manufacture consent for genocide, they too will stand on the wrong side of history.
»Link to the full study
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