NZ Herald criticized for ‘biased’ reporting of war on Gaza

Protestors gathered outside the NZME Auckland office last Monday, saying “We need to be having the voices of Palestinian people in our media every single day.” 

Since October 7, Israel has waged an indiscriminate assault against the people of Gaza, murdering over 33,000 and destroying hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, factories, homes, food and water sources. 

The protests started on March 21st outside the NZ Herald Auckland office. The most recent was last Monday outside the NZME Auckland office, this being the organisation that owns NZ Herald.  

Spokesperson for People for Palestine, Ara Marinkovich said, “NZ Herald is well overdue being held to account for its misleading terminology and white washing of war crimes.” 

“NZME claims to be responsible for the ‘first draft of history’—well, history will not look kindly on this organisation.” 

Advocate Dayna Edge collected data from NZ Herald to find what words were used most frequently to describe attacks.  

When it came to October 7th attack by Hamas, one of the most used words was “deadly” and “bloody”. 

When it came to attacks by Israel in October, one of the most used words was “intense”. The word “deadly” or “bloody” was not used anywhere.  

She found NZ Herald overall used more than double the descriptive words to describe the Hamas attack on October 7th than to describe all attacks by Israel in October. 

Edge told Massive most of NZME’s reporting on the issue was simply re-reporting from other reporters. She said this creates a ‘through the grapevine’ effect, which may result in the “propagation of misleading or even incorrect information”. 

She asked the question: “Why are we reading no reports from journalists in Gaza, when we are reading reports from journalists pretty much everywhere else?” 

NZ Herald republished an article by the New York Times, What we know about sexual violence during the October 7 attacks on Israel.  

The article was later scrutinized and debunked by the family of one of its featured victims and had one of its authors’ contracts terminated.  

Edge said NZ Herald readers wouldn’t know how questionable this article was unless they found out independently.  

Last Monday, a protestor spoke into a megaphone at the NZME office saying a western journalist said they cannot report on Gaza as they cannot get in there.  

They said this was “completely ignoring the voices of the Palestinian journalists who are risking their lives day and in and day out to report to us”. 

“They’re not platforming voices from Palestine, they only want to listen to colonized voices from the west. It’s not good enough.” 

NZ Herald was approached for comment, however, did not supply a response.