Adam Johnson’s new book, How to Sell a Genocide, is going to piss off a lot of liberals, and especially Democrats. In a full-blown attack on the liberal end of the mass media for contributing to the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza—foregoing an attack on low-hanging fruit from the right wing, like Fox “News,”—he establishes unequivocally the obscene biases of liberal press outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC (now, MSNOW) toward Israel. Not only does he examine organizational practices, but he examines the practices of individual journalists, naming names and providing evidence to back his claims.

Johnson is a careful researcher, fastidiously documenting his claims. He studied one year of mainstream media coverage, from October 2023 to October 2024, detailing both print and television coverage, and interviewing people inside the newsroom to provide additional explanation and understanding. He writes about his methodology: “By pulling from over 12,000 articles and 5,000 TV clips in nine major outlets, and showing all the work in open source format, by interviewing sources who were in the room, and by using comparative analysis of other contemporary conflicts, I will attempt to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that the genocide in Gaza was enabled, facilitated, and cheered by establishment US media providing cover for months of a nihilistic campaign of starvation, bombing, arbitrary detention, shooting and sexual violence.” “My goal,” he writes, “with this book was to write a sober, approachable, data-driven account of how the media provided cover for Israel’s destruction of Gaza….”

He is relentless in his analysis: “The primary role of the Center-Left media, I will argue, was not to accurately convey reality but, for lack of a better description, to make their readers and viewers feel better…. To make them feel better about their country, their president, their party, their institutions, and themselves. It was to rationalize, negotiate, obscure, and, ultimately, deny the most inconvenient of truths: a genocide carried out, defended, and authorized by elite liberals and liberal institutions.”

He spends most of his book laying out his case.

Johnson uses nine chapters to convey his argument. He begins by reporting on the quickly refuted claim, right after October 7th, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, of Hamas supposedly beheading 40 Israeli babies. He points out that the liberal media jumped on this:

“In the days just prior and after, the claim was repeated, without evidence or skepticism, by CNN’s Nic Robertson, CNN’s Abby Phillip, Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz, New York Post’s Olivia Land, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell, New Lines’ Lisa Goldman, The Hill’s Laura Kelly and Sharon Udasin, CBS News’ Holly Williams and Erin Lyall, an un-bylined piece at Reuters, Sky News’ Yashee Sharma, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, NBC News’ Peter Alexander, Summer Concepcion, and Meg Lebowitz. And live on-air, CNN’s Sara Sider and Hadas Gold somberly repeated the claim on October 11, without an ounce of skepticism….” [Note: Johnson, as he does throughout his book, specifically references each of these claims by providing the story from which they were taken.]

That there was not even skepticism is amazing in that it was confirmed “by the [Israeli ] Prime Ministers’ office”: might not one almost automatically assume that this office might—somehow—have an interest in promoting a story such as this, intended not just to attack Hamas, but that putting it forth might play into efforts to dehumanize Hamas and all Palestinians as being sub-human and therefore, worthy of extermination?

Additionally, the story had already been questioned by the Electronic Intifada, Business Insider, the Intercept, Mondoweiss, and Aljazeera.

It turns out “The whole story was a whole cloth fabrication. Traced to Israeli military personnel and ZAKA, a Far Right ‘disaster response’ organization with a long history of fabulism, the gruesome tale didn’t need to be true—it just needed to serve the function of ISIS-ifying Hams in the minds of the American public.”

And it worked: “The shocking viral story culminated with President Joe Biden telling reporters that not only had Hamas decapitated children, but he had seen photos of the horrors himself.”

This story, largely equating Hamas with ISIS—they were, in fact, ideological enemies and had fought one another—“was a talking point repeated with little pushback in American media. A review of the first month of coverage in both print and online media post-October 7 shows that Hamas was equated with ISIS in USA Today, CNN.com, Politico, the New York Times, Axios, Associated Press, and the Washington Post 149 times, largely reprinting uncritical quotes from Israeli and US officials. The ISIS-ification of Hamas was much worse in cable news, with on-air CNN voices equating Hamas with ISIS 350 times and MSNBC commentators doing so 369 times in the first month of the war. CNN mentioned ‘beheadings,’ including nonexistent beheadings of babies and infants, 77 times, and MSNBC did so 82 times.”

There is much more in this chapter but I’m trying to present Johnson’s work and convey the level of detail in which he approached this entire study. This book is not a hit piece: it is an excellent, very carefully done piece of work. And it continues throughout the book.

The issue of mass rape is another focus where Johnson establishes extensive differences in coverage. “Even if one was to believe the most maximalist claims that Hamas used rape as a weapon if war on October 7, there remains a staggering double standard in both coverage and selective outrage. There are numerous credible reports that the Israeli military employs widespread sexual abuse on Palestinian captives. In fact, the body of evidence is far greater in that’s it’s been confirmed by Israeli courts and on video. Yet there were only two total mentions of Israel committing acts of rape against Palestinians on CNN and MSNBC…. This is in stark contrast with the 502 on-air mentions of Palestinians engaging in mass rapes against Israelis. Print media outlets the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, and Axios mentioned Israelis sexually abusing Palestinians a total of nine times (four in the New York Times, five in the Washington Post, zero in Axios and Politico). By contrast, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico and Axios made mention of Palestinian rapes of Israelis 128 times (70 in the New York Times, 22 in the Washington Post, 24 in Politico, and six in Axios.)

Why is Johnson “picking” on the Democrats and their generally-supported media? “I am concerned with media primarily consumed by Democrats that has influence on both Democratic voters and the broader Democratic Party ideological universe.” The reason? “… there was a Democratic president in office when the genocide began in earnest, and support from Democrats in Congress and in the think-tank and media world dipositive in continuing said genocide during the given time of my study.”

He comments: “Obviously President Trump has since overseen and co-authored the genocide in Palestine and his responsibility of the broader, openly pro-genocide Republican Party—should not be ignored or downplayed. But this responsibility is beyond the scope of this book, which focuses on the nominal left-wing party backing the arming and funding of the destruction of Gaza.”

Johnson continues his compilation of data throughout the book in chapters titled “Who is Allowed to be Human” (Ch. 2), “How US Media Helped the Biden Administration Distance Itself from the Horrors of Gaza” (Ch. 3), “Covering War Crimes like Earthquakes” (Ch. 4), “How the New York Times Helped Israel Militarize Civilians, Humanitarian Workers in Gaza” (Ch. 5), “Sunday Morning News Shows, Editorial Boards, Morning Joe, and How ‘Agenda Setting’ News Limited the Debate to ‘How Many Palestinians Should Die” (Ch. 6), “Selective Empathy and Liberalism’s Crisis of Legitimacy” (Ch. 7), “‘Antisemitism’ Show Trials and the Smearing of Campus Protests” (Ch. 8), and “The Atlantic ‘Day After’ Wish-casting, and Soft Pedaling Mass Killings for the Tote Bag Set” (Ch. 9).

He concludes with thoughts and feelings about writing (and publishing) a book on genocide while it is still happening: simply, it’s weird. He writes, “But I felt it was an important contribution and urge others to expand on this and previous media criticisms from others, to detect, flag, and respond to the regime of dehumanization that is very much still ongoing. Operations of mass killing on this scale don’t happen without PR cover; they don’t happen without a propagandized, misled, and lied to public [emphasis added]. And because our survey period took place while a Democratic White House was arming, funding, and providing diplomatic cover for the genocide in Gaza, news outlets popular with Democrats were essential to this dual process of dehumanization and feigned humanitarianism, of elimination and alleged ceasefire negotiations of weapons shipments and crocodile tears. Their complicity in the genocide was rarely as openly racist as Fox News or that of the Free Press, but they were simultaneously more impactful and more subtle and thus more decisive in priming the public for a campaign of mass killing and population removal.”

This is—and you have to read the book to get the full impact—a damning indictment of the US liberal news media which has provided ideological justification to the Israeli/US war on Gaza. Johnson simply leaves no stone unturned; and he doesn’t pull any punches. Now, obviously, it’s not an indictment of all who work in the media, and I hope those journalists not implicated will approach those named villains, both individuals and corporate executives, and ask them for an in-depth response to Johnson’s charges; we cannot trust them to examine themselves, and their answers must be subjected to critical examination and follow-up questions. It cannot be left alone.

The rot Adam Johnson exposes is extensive, similar to the rot exposed in the media towards the end of the US war on Vietnam.

And it’s not over: I cannot count how many times since Trump and Netanyahu unilaterally bombed Iran beginning on February 28, 2026 that I’ve screamed at my computer how this attack was historically comparable to the Nazis invading Poland in September 1939 or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor in December 1941—and why wasn’t the media identifying Trump and Netanyahu as war criminals, deserving of being taken to The Hague to the International Criminal Court and, when found guilty, sentenced to death?

Or why the overwhelming large number of mainstream media stories take us back to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, where the Mullahs and political students overthrew the Shah, claiming that is the origin of all the animosity between Iran and the US, but somehow, they never discussed the President Eisenhower-approved 1953 coup with the US CIA and British MI6 overthrew the democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh and placed the brutal and corrupt Shah into power?

So, how to evaluate this book? I think to evaluate it we have to examine it in light of Johnson’s own desires. “My goal,” he writes, “with this book was to write a sober, approachable, data-driven account of how the media provided cover for Israel’s destruction of Gaza….” I think he has definitely achieved his goal, and I congratulate him for that. I hope this review and others will be widely shared with the US public and especially among those activists trying to end the Israeli genocide: recognizing how the ideological universe was prepared is important, and certainly important to aid in stopping this genocide and preventing others in the future.Email