The dangers of Emotional reporting on Gaza

When you click on almost any article concerning the war in Gaza, you will almost certainly be presented with a picture of rubble in Gaza (try it). Unfounded claims intended to shock us instantly make headlines. Recall the claim that 14,000 babies would die of starvation in Gaza – a claim which was retracted only after the comments had run their course. Recently, a senior humanitarian chief described Gaza as “worse than hell on earth”, and considering the absurd nature of that sentence, at this point you have to wonder; why is this type of emotive reporting regarding the situation in Gaza so common?

This isn’t only in the news. Protests on the streets chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” booming from speakers and recited by indomitable crowds. A keffiyeh-clad figure standing on the platform full of passion and anger calling to “globalise the intifada” and “end the genocide.” The passion in these slogans is clear and infectious, even to those who don’t understand what they actually mean.

For context, the Intifada in the 90s and 2000’s claimed thousands of Israeli civilian deaths in suicide bombings, stabbings and shootings. It wasn’t merely a struggle for independence against soldiers, but rather organised terror attacks against innocent civilians. Thousands of Palestinians were killed as well, sometimes even by other Palestinians. In the meantime, to call the complex urban war in Gaza a “genocide” is incredibly misleading considering the IDF’s great lengths in warning civilians ahead of bombings. I often asked protestors on Leeds campus to name either river or sea, only to be met with abashed silence. Most of them certainly didn’t agree with the implications of that catchy chant; the total destruction of the only Jewish state along with its 10 million Jewish, Muslim and Christian citizens.

So why is this emotive reporting so popular? Why is it attracting such passionate crowds in the streets? And how do we respond to it?

Sentimentalism

Quite simply, these instances are a form of emotional manipulation called “sentimentalism” and is a matter of contention in aesthetic philosophy. It is important to understand this technique in order to realise the power of these narratives and hopefully encourage us to fight against it. 

Although in our daily use we use sentimental to mean “feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia,” (Google’s definition) a more accurate philosophical definition would be, according to the philosopher Mary Midgely, “misrepresenting the world in order to indulge our feelings.” One of the ways we misrepresent the world is through those feelings of tenderness, sadness, nostalgia, and even perceived innocence (like “seeing the world through rose-tinted spectacles“). But there are other ways too, for example injustices or infringements of innocence. All these emotions are used by the sentimentalist to misrepresent reality in order to make their audience indulge in a certain feeling or worldview. For example: we feel warm like when we watch a romantic movie, and we feel righteous when we see movies portraying injustices around the world. We feel good about the triumph of love over adversity, and we are inspired by the characters’ love for each other. But if we engage our rational side, we would probably agree that the movie’s portrayal of love is unrealistic and a bad example to follow in our own daily lives and relationships.

Let me explain with an example. Shortly after our wedding, my wife won over my stubbornness and turned me into an avid Friends watcher. I’m ashamed to say it but I found Ross’ awkwardness and his nerdiness of architecture far too close to me than I would like it (just instead of architecture it’s philosophy that makes people groan at me). Overall, it’s fun to be engrossed in their world, and their friendship group offers a warmth and comfort in the face of the lonely world around us. The laughing track, being at times camp and cringe, only increased that feeling of togetherness; as if you’re watching and laughing with other people. However, my world was shattered when I came across this video on Youtube, where someone removed the laugh track from certain scenes (watch at your own peril). Without the laughing track, the characters’ interactions became awkward, weird, and outright creepy. Their toxic and unsupportive nature became clear, and most people would agree they would not want to be friends with any of them.

In essence, Friends employed laugh tracks to create the impression of humour and tenderness, which masked over the characters’ shortcomings such as their basic inability to communicate to each other. They misrepresented the reality of the characters’ interactions to indulge our feelings of warmth and togetherness. In short: they utilised sentimentalism.

Artists employ sentimentality to achieve popularity, and this comes at the expense of realistic narratives on the world around us. It’s effective because it plays on our desire to find the positive emotions even when they are difficult to achieve. After all, who doesn’t want to feel good about themselves and the warm tender world around them?

But it’s not only used for popularity. Sentimentalism also encourages us to act; for instance, the US Department of Defence was involved in the making of the sentimental blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick. By focusing on fight scenes, excitement and action, militaries can hide the boring, inane and frustrating chores of actual military life. This is excellent for persuading young men and women to join in on the ‘fun’. It would be far harder to persuade a young man to join a combat unit if their entire perception of that experience was based on cleaning toilets, oiling guns, keeping guard in the middle of the night, and commanders telling you why you can’t go home that weekend for your best friend’s birthday party. Instead, successful sentimental movies create a false perception of constant action, and they indulge our feelings of action, excitement, adventure.

Successful charity fundraisers also utilise this sentimental call to action by following the same script: highlight an injustice around the world, emphasise that we in the richer country are good people who can’t stand injustice, and finally argue that to prove that we are good people we need to donate. To highlight injustice, fundraisers typically use the worst pictures of starvation or devastation to portray the urgency and desperation of the cause (photojournalism). Although their intentions are good, this is still a sentimental misrepresentation of reality in order to indulge our feelings, and we are encouraged to satisfy our feelings of being good people by donating. 

Sentimentalism, therefore, allows us to easily convey moral values to the average ignorant bystander. It also encourages those people to act on those powerful emotions in order to feel they’re contributing to something important – either alone, or in groups or crowds. 

So, what is wrong with sentimentality?

After understanding what sentimentalism is, it should be obvious by now that much of the media portrayal of the war in Gaza is sentimental. When news outlets constantly feature ruined buildings in most articles on the war without due context – for instance, that Hamas is likely using those buildings for illegal urban warfare – in order to perpetually portray injustice of Gaza civilians, that is sentimentalism. When the BBC whitewash Gazan antisemitism by purposefully mistranslating “Jews” to “Israelis” in order to continue the narrative that Israel, not Jews, are Gazan’s enemy, that too is sentimentalism. These examples and more, feed the narrative that there is a deep injustice perpetrated by Israel on innocent Palestinians. Due to the strength of the emotions raised, the nuanced reality, that Palestinian terror plays an equally damaging part in destroying any chance for peace, is easily overpowered. This way our emotions are being manipulated in order to indulge our desire of being good people, and the only way to prove we are good people is by fighting against this deep injustice.

In other words, sentimental media narratives encourage our emotions to overlook the nuanced reality in favour of cheap thrills and righteous feelings. In downplaying the complexity of hard facts that don’t feed our one-sided narrative, media narratives essentially encourage strong emotional-fuelled action.

This explains why protestors are so passionate to end Israel, the “apartheid state”, despite the reality that Arabs enjoy the most democratic rights in Israel out of all Middle Eastern countries. When the reality is being distorted through the lens of sentimentality, we are encouraged to let our powerful emotions overlook the hard facts. It’s why consuming this form of media raises such powerful emotions that regular, young, people going to a music festival can be reduced to chanting “death to the IDF” without knowing anything about the conflict itself. It feels good to be part of a large movement that seemingly advocates for justice around the world. It feels even better when it’s so obviously evil vs good!

Antony Savile argues that a major issue with sentimentalism is that the sentimentalist will consciously “tend to resist the correction of the thought” to which their emotions react. In other words, sentimentality leads to the entrenching of dogmatically held beliefs, rather than a worldview based on justified and true beliefs of the world around us. It essentially leads us to create a false, warm cocoon of a distorted reality. It also means that increasingly extreme forms of protests is encouraged – as the emotional intensity of the sentimental reporting needs some form of outlet. Think about increasing pressure in a bottle, if you close the lid and continue to increase pressure it will explode. So too here, if you continue to feed sentimental narratives, while in reality the war continues (a necessity to remove Hamas and bring us closer to peace), at some point the pressure will be too much.

So what can we do?

However, as with most things, this entrenched worldview can still be challenged and defeated. After all, seeing it without the laugh track I will always watch Friends with a more realistic eye. Where my emotional attachment to the characters has been seriously damaged, so too we can pierce that cocoon with most people who have been fed sentimental news on the war in Gaza. We can do this with meaningful, respectful debates or interactions. We do it by not letting our own emotions overpower rational explanations. Friends without the laugh track didn’t replace my warm emotions with other strong emotions but rather revealed to me the non-distorted reality of the terrible relationships within that show.

When we set up public activities raising awareness on antisemitism at Leeds University, campus protest organisers were keen to avoid meaningful talks with us. They knew the danger informed opinions posed to their cocooned supporters. They wanted us to shout at them and match sentimental-driven emotions with other sentimental-driven emotions.

Their worst fears were by the same manner of delivery of showing Friends without the laugh track, we would show the case in Israel without the sentimentalism.