October 7th 2023 marked the start of a war against Gaza, which is considered one of the most devastating wars in modern history and has led to a stark attitudinal divide within and between countries. To investigate the role of media bias in reporting on this asymmetrical warfare, we analyzed over 14,000 news articles published during the first year of war in three Western (The New York Times, BBC, CNN) and one non-Western English-language outlets (Al Jazeera English). Exploring the media narratives concerning Israeli and Palestinian victims experiencing hardship, we found three systematic biases in Western media. 1) Compared to Palestinian victims, represented mainly as undifferentiated collectives, Israeli victims were more likely to be portrayed as identifiable individual human beings. 2) Despite the striking difference in all forms of hardship (casualties, displacement, etc.), Western journalists created a false balance, equating Israeli and Palestinian suffering, by persistently referring back to the 7th of October massacre, even in the absence of new events involving Israeli victims. 3) When reporting on numbers of Palestinian (vs. Israeli) victims, journalists used language that casts doubt about the credibility of the information and the reputation of the source providing it, thereby selectively undermining the reader's trust in the information regarding Palestinian suffering. Together, our analysis reveals a series of systematic journalistic biases in high-profile Western media that are absent or greatly reduced in Al Jazeera.

翻译：2023年10月7日标志着针对加沙的战争爆发，这场战争被视为现代史上最具破坏性的冲突之一，并在国家内部与国家之间引发了显著的态度分化。为探究媒体偏见在这场不对称战争报道中的作用，我们分析了战争第一年内三家西方媒体（《纽约时报》、BBC、CNN）与一家非西方英文媒体（半岛电视台英文频道）发布的超过14,000篇新闻报道。通过考察媒体对经历苦难的以色列与巴勒斯坦受害者的叙事，我们发现了西方媒体存在的三种系统性偏见：1）相较于主要被呈现为无差别集体的巴勒斯坦受害者，以色列受害者更可能被描绘为可识别的独立个体；2）尽管各类苦难（伤亡、流离失所等）存在显著差异，西方记者通过持续回溯10月7日屠杀事件（即使在未发生涉及以色列受害者的新事件时），制造了虚假平衡，将以色列与巴勒斯坦的苦难等同视之；3）在报道巴勒斯坦（相较于以色列）受害者数量时，记者使用的语言对信息的可信度及消息来源的声誉提出质疑，从而选择性地削弱了读者对巴勒斯坦苦难相关信息的信任。综合分析表明，西方主流媒体存在一系列系统性新闻偏见，而这些偏见在半岛电视台的报道中并未出现或显著减弱。