The Otago Daily Times feature “Holding firm for Gaza in Ōtepoti” (Oct 9) is presented as a human-interest story. In reality, it is a work of advocacy that abandons the basic discipline of journalism: to inform, verify, and balance.
The article uncritically repeats the claim that Israel is committing “genocide” and “apartheid” — allegations not upheld by any international court or credible legal body. Even the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures in the South Africa case did not determine that genocide was occurring. Yet readers are told, without qualification, that it has been “declared” as such. This is not reporting; it is repetition of propaganda.
Equally absent is any reference to the cause of the conflict or the nature of Hamas, whose massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, triggered the war in Gaza. Hamas’s charter calls for Israel’s destruction and the killing of Jews worldwide. It diverts aid, stores weapons in hospitals, and uses its own civilians as shields. None of this appeared in McKinlay’s piece.
Instead, readers were offered emotional testimony that demonises Israel and romanticises those aligned with Hamas’s narrative. Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany — printed without editorial challenge — are not only grotesque distortions of history but forms of antisemitic incitement under the IHRA definition, which New Zealand has yet to adopt.
The article’s framing further compounds the problem. Placing it in the Life & Style section trivialises the gravity of the topic while cloaking activism in lifestyle journalism. This is how misinformation becomes normalised: through soft features that humanise one side and erase the context of terror, ideology, and moral complexity.
Responsible journalism demands proportion, verification, and a duty to truth. None were on display here. Instead, Dunedin readers were handed a narrative that reinforces division, spreads falsehoods, and vilifies the Jewish state.
New Zealanders deserve better from their media. They deserve coverage that distinguishes between compassion and complicity, between solidarity and slander. Gaza’s suffering is real — but so is Hamas’s responsibility for it. Ignoring that truth is not empathy; it is deception.
If New Zealand’s press wishes to play a constructive role in peace, it must begin by reclaiming integrity from ideology.
