On Monday, Israel and Hamas exchanged captives as part of US President Donald Trump's 20-point Gaza ceasefire plan.
Mainstream western media coverage of the exchange reflected the same pro-Israel bias that has long characterised reporting on Israel and Palestine, which privileges Israeli lives over Palestinian ones.
Major outlets such as the BBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, Reuters, Deutsche Welle and Agence France-Presse foregrounded Israeli captives, both living and dead, while largely downplaying the experiences of Palestinians.
Across newspapers, television broadcasts, websites and social media, Israeli captives and their families received far more attention - and were humanised through personal details and emotional imagery - than Palestinians.
For instance, seven out of eight AFP tweets on the exchange focused exclusively on Israeli captives. Reuters published a 36-photo gallery in which 26 images featured Israeli hostages, their families or ordinary citizens celebrating, while only nine depicted Palestinians.
While the BBC website ran several stories about the exchange, including some on Palestinian captives and their families, it also published a detailed and sympathetic profile of the 20 released Israeli hostages titled "Who are the released hostages?" - with no equivalent feature on Palestinians.
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CNN reported on the release of Palestinian "prisoners" and included some humanising details, but the headline for its main story, "Hostage families reunited as Trump is cheered in Israeli parliament", mentioned only Israelis.
Likewise, the Washington Post's list of six "key developments" began with Trump's speech, the Gaza war and the Sharm el-Sheikh summit. The following two bullet points focused on Israeli captives, both living and dead, while only the final point mentioned Palestinians.
The Post offered some degree of humanisation for Palestinians, but the pro-Israel imbalance remained apparent.
Unequal attention
Since Trump announced his plan two weeks ago, western coverage has focused heavily on Hamas's requirement to release the remains of 28 dead Israeli captives.
Much less attention has been devoted to Israel's obligation, under Article 5 of the plan, to return the remains of 420 Palestinians it has long withheld.
News database searches show extensive focus on Israeli bodies and virtually no mention of Palestinian remains
That imbalance continued on Monday. News database searches show extensive focus on Israeli bodies and virtually no mention of Palestinian remains.
This striking double standard reflects deeper problems in western reporting, which routinely ignores and downplays Israeli human rights violations.
According to Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, Israel has a "long-standing practice" of withholding Palestinian bodies to use "as bargaining chips" in negotiations. Israeli counter-terrorism laws allow the government to withhold the bodies of deceased Palestinians and restrict their funerals.
More than 600 Palestinian bodies are currently held by Israel - a reality western media rarely acknowledge.
Linguistic double standard
Western outlets almost universally refer to Israeli captives as "hostages", a usage defensible under international law since those taken by Hamas meet the conventional legal definition of hostage-taking.
The question, however, is why Palestinians taken captive by Israel are not described in the same way.
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After 7 October 2023, Israel detained more than 1,700 civilians from Gaza, including many women and children, who had no role in the attacks. They have been held without charge for nearly two years.
Given Israel's clear intent to use these detainees as bargaining chips in negotiations, they too arguably meet the definition of hostages under international law. Western media outlets nonetheless continue to label them only as "detainees" or "prisoners", reflecting a persistent linguistic double standard that shapes perceptions of innocence, guilt, and suffering.
Academic research has long documented this pattern, in which western outlets reserve the harshest descriptors for Palestinian actions while softening those applied to Israel.
Decades of studies also show that western coverage of Israel and Palestine often omits crucial context, especially concerning Israeli violations. Monday's reporting on the captive exchange was no exception.
My review found little mention of Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, the ongoing blockade of Gaza, or the genocide allegations against Israel. Where context was included, it often focused on the 7 October Hamas attacks.
A particularly revealing omission in western coverage of the captives' exchange was that Palestinians were explicitly forbidden from celebrating the return of those released. While Israelis were encouraged to celebrate the return of their captives, Palestinians waiting outside Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank were met with Israeli police firing tear gas at families and journalists.
The Guardian was among the few mainstream outlets to note the prohibition.
Such moments are not minor details: Israel's attempt to control even the emotional expressions of Palestinians further exposes both the power asymmetry and the cruelty of its military occupation.
Media reckoning
Western media reporting of the captive exchange did more than privilege one side; it reinforced a hierarchy of human worth in which Israeli lives are inherently more valuable and sympathetic than Palestinian ones.
This is consistent with broader research on media coverage of the war. For example, a study published last year about the first two weeks of the war - when nearly 3,000 Palestinians and about 1,200 Israelis were killed - found that sampled outlets ran four times as many emotional, personalised accounts of Israeli victims as Palestinian victims.
Western media reporting of the captive exchange reinforced a hierarchy of human worth in which Israeli lives are inherently more valuable
Other studies confirm western media's chronic over-reliance on Israeli and pro-Israeli sources.
But news audiences are changing, and so is public opinion on Israel
and Palestine. Over the past two years, pro-Palestinian sentiment has
risen sharply across western publics, especially among young people and,
even as trust in mainstream media declines, and it continues to face intensifying criticism.
In light of this shift, it is not surprising that many people - particularly youths - are turning instead to independent or alternative platforms for coverage of Israel and Palestine.
Within newsrooms, too, dissent is growing. Staff revolts have erupted at major outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the BBC, where hundreds of journalists have expressed anger over obvious pro-Israel editorial policies.
At what point will newsrooms recognise the gravity of this crisis? For the sake of news audiences, journalists and suffering Palestinians, a reckoning cannot come soon enough.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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