‘Soft Language’ and Fabricated ‘Facts’: On the Need for Context in Mainstream Journalism

By Benay Blend

Rather than focusing on the (de)merits of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) itself, the following highlights instead the ways that mainstream media tends to cover events in the Middle East.

There has been a spate of recent articles that cover the US/Iran negotiations. Whether from the right or hailing from the left, most follow the same trajectory that condemns Trump for “capitulating” to Iran while granting that if peace follows the final round of talks that would be a benefit for all.

Rather than focusing on the (de)merits of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) itself, the following highlights instead the ways that mainstream media tends to cover events in the Middle East.

In “Western Media Complicity in Zionist War Crimes is Betrayal of Journalism 101,” South African journalist Iqbal Jassat traces the ways that language contributes to perception. Specifically, both “soft language” that uses neutral terms like “conflict” in place of genocide and more biased terms that portray Palestinians as “human animals” contributed to “manufacturing consent for the Gaza genocide.”

The most damning hasbara (propaganda), perhaps, was the Zionist claim that Hamas committed mass rapes on October 7. Despite multiple investigations that provided no evidence at all, except in the eyes of Israeli propagandists, these claims, Romana Rubeo explains, provided the “moral foundation” of the entity’s genocide on Gaza.

In contrast, the media seldom mentioned the torture and sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners inside  Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman prison. “By repeating unverified claims of Hamas rapes,” Rubeo concludes, “while downplaying verified Israeli sexual crimes, Western media transformed journalism into a weapon of war.”

When all else failed, liberal Zionists, among others, who might have finally declared, like Senator Bernie Sanders, that “it is genocide,” continued to maintain Israel’s right to defend itself, a claim made in defiance of international law.

“Israel has a right to defend itself,” Senator Sanders declared on X. “But innocent Palestinians also have a right to life and security,” thus he distinguishes between the resistance, who in Sanders’ eyes, have every right to die at the hands of Israeli weapons, and everyone else, supposedly those who do not support defiance.

A similar strategy of “soft language” and fabricated “facts” presaged the bombing of Iran. “What does it take to shake illusions in Western intervention?” asked Owen Jones in the months leading up to the Trump administration’s bombing of Iran.

Although Jones does not support US intervention, his language falls into the trap of what journalist/activist Ramzy Baroud labels “the cowardice of qualification,” i.e., an anti-war position but with the caveat of calling for regime change in the process.

Referring to the “barbarism being unleashed by the Iranian theocratic regime” during what began as legitimate protests, Jones fails to mention CIA and Mossad infiltration of those events for the purpose of destabilizing the country.

“Protests regularly occur across Iran for a range of reasons,” explains Robert Inlakesh, all carried out with no violence. But this time, on New Year’s Day, 2026, external operatives went into action by generating carnage against security forces and creating general mayhem.

In the past, Inlakesh notes, there was a popular element to the protests, but this time it did not happen. For this reporter, it was thus “crystal clear that this [was] an attack on Iran using agents on the ground.”

But this was rarely reported in Western media. When it did appear, it was without condemnation of Israel’s intervention in another country. Indeed, when former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remarked, “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also, to every Mossad agent walking beside them,” he openly admitted their presence.

The same could be said for mainstream coverage of the negotiations. Writing for the New York Times, Robert Malley, special envoy for Iran from 2021 to 2023, and Stephen Wertheim, historian of US foreign policy, concede that Trump’s policies led to an “unnecessary, unjustified, and unlawful war,” but in their analysis, there is no mention of Iranian casualties, not to mention the destruction of their country.

Instead, the two reporters claim that the conflict’s aftermath might bestow an “accidental gift,” that being a future aversion to war with Iran replaced by “serious diplomacy.”

How will this come about? Not because of approximately 3,568 Iranians dead and over 26,500 injured. Instead, Malley and Wertheim cite depleted munitions as the cost of war, whose loss it seems is more important than human life.

As for the MoU, most Western commentators viewed it as “capitulation,” a term that appears over and over again in the mainstream press. In many ways, perhaps that is a correct assessment, but not necessarily a negative outcome as many in the West called it.

Assessing the war as a “strategic disaster” for the US and Israel, Sami Al-Arian, Director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) in Istanbul, views the outcome as yet another instance where physical destruction of another country fails to dictate the political outcome of a war.

“Rather than further isolating Iran,” Al-Arian concludes, the final agreement includes “reconstruction assistance, economic integration, access to frozen assets, banking and insurance waivers and a framework for normalization of commercial relations.”

While the term “capitulation” floated around, it should be remembered that the US spent approximately $2.2 billion on the reconstruction of Japan between 1946 and 1952. It also allocated $4.3 billion in reconstruction aid for Germany between 1946 and 1952.

Thus, financial agreements with Iran fall into a long line of reparations paid to other countries that the US had previously destroyed.

What links all of these examples from mainstream media is their lack of context. Each event is presented as if it came out of thin air with no historical context.

Having taught various kinds of history for approximately 30 years—American history, New Mexico History, and Native American History—it’s safe to say that increasingly the majority of students feel little need to know how they fit into the scheme of things, how the past defines much of the present and the future.

The late historian Howard Zinn believed that if you know a little history, then you can understand the present. That is certainly the case today.

For example, looking back at the “color revolutions” in Cuba, it was clear that they were organized by the United States. As Alan MacLeod explained in 2021, protests on the island were presented as spontaneous uprisings against oppression, but they were actually organized in a forum controlled by the Cuban-American community in Florida with the backing of the US state.

Knowing that information, it made sense that the more recent protests in Iran resulted from external sources, this time that of the Mossad, with the backing of the United States.

Similarly, some knowledge of the damage caused by sanctions might have put the MoU in a different light. Rather than a capitulation, it provided a modicum of justice after decades of US-led sanctions that Sarah Shamim writes have led to Iran’s current economic crisis.

Indeed, sanctions are an act of war, as Jason Hickle, Dylan Sullivan, and Omar Tayyab explain. While primarily imposed in an effort to “strangle access to international trade, destabilize industries, and inflame crises to promote state collapse,” sanctions by the EU and the US, enforced since 1970, have killed 38 million people. More than half are children and the elderly, who are the most vulnerable to malnutrition.

The lives of people lost in Iran due to economic sanctions and military actions cannot be brought back through reparations. On the other hand, financial settlements to repair the damage for the living are only just.

“Without honesty, without context, and without the courage to speak clearly, the conversation cannot move forward,” Baroud concludes. “The constant need to qualify—to balance, to soften, to distance—does not advance justice, it obscures it.”

Because of the “cowardice of qualification,” not only are lives lost in the process, but quite often the victims are blamed for their deaths. “The result is not balance,” Baroud concludes, “it is paralysis.”

Better yet, instead of begging mainstream outlets to change their ways, it makes more sense to support more credible news sources that provide context without qualification.