On October 1, the Israeli army published The Press Files, naming 170 Palestinians killed in Gaza who were presented as journalists and saying they belonged to armed groups. Fox News headlined it October 5, with the army as its only named source. Read the Fox headline as a sentence. The IDF is its subject twice: it pushes back, and it says. The 170 appear only as members of terror groups. Nobody in the sentence kills them, and the accusers are a claim with no name. A plain sentence from the same facts would carry both: the army says 170 of those killed were in armed groups; the Committee to Protect Journalists counts 189 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed by Israel in Gaza. The page against its headline: the first paragraph says in Fox’s own voice that the 170 ‘were actually in’ Hamas, PIJ and other groups. The word alleged first appears in the sixth paragraph. The ninth ends ‘All 170 have been killed.’ with no killer in it. Fox never gives a total for journalists killed in Gaza, and its only named sources are the IDF and an unnamed IDF official. The picture on top shows masked gunmen in green headbands, not the 170 and not a press vest. The power here is plain. The army fought the war, holds the civil and military ID numbers and publishes the list; the 170 are dead and cannot answer. Some names may hold: The Times of Israel reports CPJ already removed some after they were shown to be operatives. The move is the order. When the dead arrive already labeled, the question of how they died stops being asked. The tell: when the side with the guns is the one pushing back, look at who is being pushed.
