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- [00:00]
Omar Al-Saleh
The Global Gaming League is presented by
- [00:02]
Howie Mandel
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- [00:31]
Reporter on Israeli media
This week on the take, we're marking one year since a pair of devastating earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria with a new digital interactive Listen and watch stories of survival, recovery and coping with the grief@al jazeera.com earthquakes Again, that's aljazeera.com earthquakes
- [00:58]
Omar Al-Saleh
the war on Iran and the way it's being covered Starting with the US where the White House says that journalism is insufficiently patriotic and there is talk of treason in the air, censorship is taking place across the board, ranging from self censorship to the kind imposed by some of the states involved. And we focus on Lebanon.
- [01:19]
Jean Cassir
Around 20% of Lebanon is displaced as
- [01:21]
Omar Al-Saleh
we speak, which Israel is threatening to turn into the next Gaza and where its soldiers are running amok. Once again, This week brought significant developments in the U. S Israeli war on Iran. From the ongoing efforts to decapitate the leadership in Tehran to the continued blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and now major strikes on energy infrastructure across the region, bringing the conflict into a much more perilous phase. Our focus as always here at the Listening Post is on the journalism, what it's up against, the way the war is being covered. For reporters in the U.S. israel and Iran, the challenges differ, but they face the same reality. This war is escalating and has become a story in which propaganda, the projection of strength, can matter as much as military might does. Which means that news organizations are under pressure from multiple sides, from vested interests shaping the narrative to leaders who, for whatever reason, want to keep on fighting. The stakes are growing by the day and the trajectory that this story takes could be affected by the decisions being made, not just in war rooms, but in newsrooms.
- [02:43]
Media Analyst
The Fargo war, the media war, the information war, is very important for all sides to try to shape the narrative, especially in the United States. With increased pressure by the administration to shut down certain conversations critical of the
- [02:59]
Press Freedom Advocate
war, their leaders are gone and we could do a lot worse.
- [03:04]
Omar Al-Saleh
Americans know all about their corporate media outlets, self Censoring at times. But journalists there are unaccustomed to censorship imposed from above by the government. It is nothing new to Iranians, where such restrictions are a fact of life. And whenever, whenever Israel finds itself at war, usually by starting one, journalists have to deal with military censors telling them what they can or cannot report. But Americans have never had someone like Brendan Carr, who heads the US broadcast regulator, threaten to pull the licenses of news outlets over their critical coverage of the war. At no time have they had a Secretary of War, let alone one who rants the way Pete Hexseth has, instructing journalists on the kind of spin America's latest war efforts effort requires, for example, a banner or a headline Mideast war intensifies. What should the banner read instead? How about Iran? Increasingly desperate President Donald Trump went further than that, saying some journalists should be charged with treason, a crime that in the US is punishable by death.
- [04:14]
Legal Expert on Media Rights
The United States has very strong and broad protections for what you can actually publish if you're a member of the media, much more so than other Western countries. So they're going to find it hard to make good on this threat. But at the same time, just the fact that they're able to make this threat can have the intimidatory effect that they're looking for and lead media outlets to self censor.
- [04:38]
Press Freedom Advocate
The US Government expects to be served by a mobilized media to advance the interests of the state rather than any considerations for professional journalistic standards. Although the Gaza genocide, much of the corporate media in the United States willingly forfeited its professional responsibilities.
- [05:02]
Media Analyst
All wars empower authoritarian tendencies, strengthen authoritarian moves. The war is also shutting down free flow of information in Israel, ramping up the repression tactics in Iran. But for America, whose exceptionality lies in the free speech and the First Amendment, this represents more of a threat, because US society could move to look more like our adversaries than ourselves, or like
- [05:35]
Omar Al-Saleh
their ally in this war, Israel. Military censorship there goes back decades. Journalists have had to deal with it during the genocide in Gaza, the ongoing attacks on Lebanon. But the conflict over Iran has deepened those restrictions. They now go beyond the clampdown on live coverage, the images Israelis are able to see of projectiles incoming from Iran. The Israeli government does not allow us
- [06:01]
Reporter on Israeli media
or want us to show where that may have come up.
- [06:03]
Omar Al-Saleh
They affect what Israelis are able to know about their military stockpiles, the very real concern that they have been depleted and that Israeli lives are now at risk because of that. The Netanyahu government does not want those vulnerabilities out there. We're watching from above, and the reporting is censored accordingly.
- [06:25]
Reporter on Israeli media
The Israeli military and the media shape everything that Israelis understand about the war. Certain live broadcasts have been shut down and the police have actually been out searching for certain journalists. So there's a lot more of a crackdown. And Israeli journalists who don't comply can suffer from, you know, serious penalization, arrest, equipment being taken away. But the truth is that Israeli journalists, most of them, comply anyway, basically echoing the military narrative. They don't really question it.
- [06:57]
Press Freedom Advocate
We have numerous military analysts who have been stating for months that depletion is a real risk. But if you look at the Israeli media, this is being presented as not factual information. I put my trust on military analysts who have repeatedly concluded that interceptors are in increasingly short supply and that replenishing them is going to be a very difficult task.
- [07:29]
Reporter on Israeli media
And a big part of it is, you know, information warfare, psychological warfare, propaganda. There were reports in the last few days that Netanyahu was assassinated and it was all over the Internet, even though there was not even a target of that kind, as far as I know. But a lot of people started to believe that. And so the downside from the Israeli perspective of putting so much crackdown is that people start believing all types of things because there's no truth coming out.
- [07:55]
Omar Al-Saleh
Iran is out to plug leaks as well. Its police Chief announced that 500 citizens have been arrested this past week for sharing information to, quote, hostile entities, which likely includes foreign news outlets. Tehran has allowed some of those news teams into the Islamic Republic, CNN and Sky News, but has walled off others like Iran International, which has far more viewers in Iran than Western outlets do. The Persian language channel that operates in exile out of London often provides a platform for Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah, who wants his family to return to power. The channel has also been known to cozy up to the Israelis.
- [08:39]
Jean Cassir
I believe in you. I respect you. I admire you. I know that Iran can be great again.
- [08:46]
Media Analyst
Iran is a deeply polarized society. You have liberal Iranians, some of whom were actually in favor of foreign strikes. And you have deeply committed Iranians supporting the government's war efforts. You have outside influence operations, the Mossad and media networks such as Iran International. And so Iran has tried to clamp down on that by criminalizing any kind of citizen statement to these foreign channels to try to shut down the leaks.
- [09:15]
Legal Expert on Media Rights
Iran has arrested several hundred people now and claims that they were leaking to the enemy. In wartime, espionage is regularly lobbed against not actual spies, but against Journalists in an attempt to clamp down on inconvenient information getting out. You know, they say, you're a foreign agent. We're going to put you in prison.
- [09:37]
Press Freedom Advocate
For all the lack of press freedom that the Iranian media has to endure and the restrictions that foreign media in Iran are compelled to accept, we came
- [09:49]
Omar Al-Saleh
overland among the only international journalists currently allowed in.
- [09:53]
Press Freedom Advocate
Iran has provided foreign media more access in Iran during wartime than Israel ever allowed in the Gaza Strip. For more than two years now, Israel has systematically prevented the entry of a single foreign correspondent into the Gaza Strip unless basically going as an adjunct of the Israeli military.
- [10:19]
Omar Al-Saleh
US polls indicate that fewer than 30% of Americans approve of this war. At the outset of the Iraq war, the opposite was true. More than 70% supported it. Getting a country onto a war footing requires groundwork militarily and psychologically. And John Bolton, who was the national security adviser during Donald Trump's first term, understands that. A notorious war hawk, Bolton also worked under George W. Bush. Last week, he told National Public Radio that one of the White House's failings on Iran was not, quote, preparing the American people ahead of the attack the way he and the Bush administration did in 2003, when the US media also played a major role helping to push the bogus claims of Iraqi WMDs. Donald Trump is not seeing the same complicity in the coverage this time around. For the President and his administration, that's unpatriotic. Hence the threats against journalists, the loose talk of treason.
- [11:25]
Legal Expert on Media Rights
What does any desperate leader who has launched a war that's gotten them into hot water, do they resort to threats to try to silence the people who are reporting about this rather than stop the root of the problem, which is the decision to go to war? And we should be very glad that reporters are not listening to the demands for a patriotic press. The highest level of patriotism, really, is the willingness to scrutinize an irresponsible and reckless government that is steering the country into disaster. That's what true patriotism is.
- [12:00]
Media Analyst
I think a major part of this is propaganda, the media forming and controlling narratives. But it also means that programs such as yours are more important than ever because ultimately the narrative that prevails ensures which side lasts longer in this conflict.
- [12:22]
Omar Al-Saleh
Israel is continuing its targeting of Iranian political leaders, killing three more senior figures there. Much of the coverage in Israel and across international media has ranged from the triumphalist to the awestruck, largely sidestepping the legal matter of how these assassinations violate international law. Meenakshi Ravi is here with more Extrajudicial
- [12:44]
Meenakshi Ravi
killings have long been a central tactic of the Israeli state. This past week, Israel announced it had killed three senior figures, including the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani. The news zipped across Israeli outlets. Beyond Israel, much of the media coverage focused on the sophistication of the operation. The intelligence gathering, the COVID planning, the execution. What was largely missing was any serious discussion of legality. No state is authorized to kill a civilian from another country, even one in political office, even one accused of ordering violence. In the media's reporting on Larijani, the focus has been on his record, including his role in ordering the mass killing of Iranian protesters. In January this year, he was eliminated.
- [13:42]
Omar Al-Saleh
Why this is important because this is the person who is in charge of the bloody crackdown.
- [13:52]
Meenakshi Ravi
Coverage like this is part of a wider pattern. When the Israelis kill their political enemies, two things are foregrounded. The sophistication of Israeli intelligence, particularly Mossad, and the crimes of those targeted social media. Posts like this one make the rounds. Benjamin Netanyahu alongside US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, taking pleasure in crossing names off a list of targets.
- [14:15]
Omar Al-Saleh
So it's a punch card.
- [14:17]
Jean Cassir
Today I erased two names on the
- [14:20]
Omar Al-Saleh
punch cards and you see how many
- [14:22]
Jean Cassir
more to go on this batch.
- [14:24]
Meenakshi Ravi
Killing as a numbers game where targets are counted, names are erased, and the question of legality disappears.
- [14:31]
Omar Al-Saleh
Thanks, Mena. There are millions of other people directly suffering the effects of this war without attracting much media coverage. The people of Lebanon. Israeli forces have begun ground operations there and many fear that their goal is to occupy once again the southern part of the country. One out of five Lebanese citizens has already been forced from their homes. The UN says Israel has wounded or killed the equivalent of one classroom of school children per day, having destroyed entire residential buildings in the middle of Beirut and bombed civilian infrastructure to isolate the south. Israel has also showered Lebanon with propaganda leaflets boasting openly that it will turn the country into the new Gaza. One news outlet covering these developments is the Beirut based Megaphone. Its co founder and managing director, Jean Cassir, joins me now. The Israelis have forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of people across a broad patch of south Lebanon. Talk to us about what's happening down there and how effectively are journalists able to report from that area?
- [15:40]
Jean Cassir
Yeah, thanks for having me to start to give some fact and figures. Around 20% of Lebanon is displaced as we speak. So it's a million people out of a 6 million people country. It's extremely difficult to report from the south. Israel is clearly trying to isolate the south. This comes after marking entire areas that amount to 15% of Lebanon in red on the map, which basically means an evacuation order for everybody within those areas, including a big city like Tyre and entire villages. So the intention is very clear. Nobody should get close to the south. It's extremely difficult to have an actual verification process and getting images that are directly from there. The only journalists who are still daring to go there, most of them are foreign journalists and most of them have to do it within a security framework. So either within the army or within also some tours organized by Hezbollah or within special special missions that are basically supported or protected by security personnel.
- [16:46]
Omar Al-Saleh
The Israelis are also bombarding the Lebanese with propaganda, with psychological warfare. Walk us through some of the things that they're doing on that score. How reminiscent is this of what we've seen in Gaza? Talk to us about some of the similarities, maybe the differences.
- [17:02]
Jean Cassir
Yeah, I mean, I'll start by saying the differences like Gaza is a genocide and it's very important out of respect for what the Palestinian people endured, not to make false comparisons. But the similarities unfortunately do exist. It starts with the mass evacuation basically overnight. Asking the entire southern suburb of Beirut, which amounts maybe to half of Manhattan, to evacuate. Created a panic among people who flocked to the streets and ended up sleeping in their cars that night. The same happened with the evacuation order I mentioned in the entire southern Litany area. This also is coupled with fake calls asking for evacuation of specific building, which contributed psychological warfare. Add to it the constant buzzing of the drones above our heads, which creates a lot of ambient anxiety in the city. And this preceded the current escalation post March 2nd. And finally what we've witnessed a couple of days ago, which is the leaflets that were dropped from the sky, from the, from the warplanes. And those leaflets ask basically the Lebanese to scan a QR code and to join information WhatsApp groups that the Israeli army manages. We should also add to it the discourse of Israeli ministers such as Smotrich, who clearly threatened to turn the southern suburb of Beirut Dahi into a new Khan Yunis, which adds to a lot of rhetoric of erasure and annihilation that has been coming out of a lot of Israeli officials when talking about Lebanon. And finally we have the media phenomenon which is Ali Khay Adrai, the former Arabic speaking spokesperson of the Israeli army, which constantly not only threatens the Lebanese through those evacuation orders, but also engages with critics that are coming out of social media, which creates further fear. Imagine a person working for the Israeli army Responding to a meme or responding to a joke that a comedian, for example, or a social media commentator would say about you. On the one hand, it tries to create some familiarity with the Lebanese audience, but on the other hand, I personally feel that it's extremely threatening. It means that they're observing. It means that they're very much aware of all the conversation going on in Lebanon's social media landscape. And finally try a lot to weaponize the legitimate criticism that exists in Lebanon against Hezbollah for their own propaganda and for their own discourse that they're here to liberate. While we all know that Lebanon has always been under threat from Israel way before the existence of Hezbollah.
- [19:46]
Omar Al-Saleh
Well, let's dig into that angle right now. The way Hezbollah is perceived in Lebanon. There was a government directive this past week issued to state run news outlets not to call the organization a, quote, resistance group. So how is Hezbollah perceived by the Lebanese people, by the government there, by the media and beyond?
- [20:10]
Jean Cassir
I mean, it's very important to mention the broader framework under which we are operating as journalists. We're covering an Israeli war, an Israeli aggression against a deeply divided country. And this division is not necessarily related to our stance toward Israel. I think most Lebanese do not see in ISRA any potential ally. The overwhelming majority sees Israel as an aggressor. But the dispute is around Hezbollah's rule. Hezbollah is multifaceted. Hezbollah used to be a very legitimate resistance movement up until the year 2000, until it decided to become more hegemonic at the Lebanese level. And a lot of people who opposed Hezbollah's hegemony in Lebanon paid a very heavy price, including being killed. Another point of disagreement is Hezbollah's deep connection with the Iranian regime. And this is something that created a lot of backlash when the rockets were fired on March 2 because it was seen as a direct support for the regime at a time where Hezbollah remained quite passive. Over a year, when we had more than 10,000 Israeli violations of the ceasefire, we didn't see any rocket being fired. So there is a lot of attention around Hezbollah's role and Hezbollah's motives when it comes to its regional affiliation and also its local hegemony project.
- [21:30]
Omar Al-Saleh
Given all of that, Jean, the context, the politics, how freely are Lebanese journalists able to report on Hezbollah? Are there restrictions? Are there red lines? Formal, informal? Is there censorship or self censorship at play?
- [21:47]
Jean Cassir
We're in a country that's deeply divided, so this kind of allows for a margin of, of criticism against the other party. This doesn't mean that Hezbollah has ever been a big Fan of freedom of expression. I mean, a lot of journalists paid a very heavy price for their critical stances. The latest being Lochman Sleem. But today, as we speak, the. The main threat on journalists is coming from Israel because in the 2024 war we had several of our colleagues that were assassinated, starting with Isam Abdullah, the photojournalist. I'm not saying this to deflect the attention that Hezbollah has clear authoritarian and hegemonic tendencies. But as we speak today, the main threat is coming from Israel.
- [22:26]
Omar Al-Saleh
The work that you do at Megaphone focuses on documenting everyday life under attack. Give us an idea of a recent story that has stood out for you. And how do these kinds of stories challenge the narrative that's out there on Lebanon of a fragmented or collapsing country?
- [22:45]
Jean Cassir
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't pick one, but I would pick maybe a theme that we're covering, which is the amazing grassroots solidarity efforts. Lebanon is kind of forgotten in this regional conflict. There's not a lot of money that's coming in like it was the case in the 2024 war. It's still a country that is suffering from a very acute economic collapse. So people have been impoverished for the last six years. But still, despite the polarization that exists, despite the sectarian tensions that exist, we still find like remarkable solidarity efforts that are happening at the grassroots level, from community kitchens to initiatives that are providing shelter for migrant domestic workers or for queer people or for people who are not a part of the map of aid, to personal initiatives from restaurants or from shops that are providing washing machines for people who have left their homes, all sorts of grassroots initiatives. This is something that is showing a picture of the country, a country that is still possible. This is what I would call it at times the level of division level makes you feel that this is an impossible equation. But when you see the solidarity happening organically, despite all forms of political divisions that exist, this is the kind of narrative that Megaphone is showing. We're not denying the divisions, but we're showing another facet of Lebanese society, one that is determined to be resistant to any form of aggression and to also provide aid. And consider that any Lebanese displaced is a person that concerns us all.
- [24:21]
Omar Al-Saleh
Jean Cassir, Managing Director of Megaphone, thanks for speaking with us here at the Listening Post today.
- [24:27]
Jean Cassir
Thank you.
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Omar Al-Saleh
And finally, another disturbing similarity between what is taking place in Lebanon and what Israeli soldiers ship showed of themselves in Gaza on social media. Once again, they are documenting through their phone cameras their appetite for eluding homes, stealing personal property, playing with what they find there, including women's lingerie, all to further humiliate the Lebanese people they have already displaced or killed. Their behavior relies on relies on impunity, allowing these soldiers to share these videos with no regard to the potential consequences because in Gaza there were none. The videos also serve as a reminder that in many cases these are not full time soldiers. There are thousands of reservists involved. They come from every corner of Israeli society, people who will soon return to civilian life. Their day jobs like this character, A doctor whose job it is to preserve Israeli lives when he is not taking and dehumanizing the lives of the other and then bragging about it on social media.
- [25:58]
Howie Mandel
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