How the Cypriot media covered the Gaza conflict

A new study called Media Coverage of Gaza: The Case of Cyprus has been released by Universitas Publications and the Institute for Mass Media, and will be presented at an international conference at the University of Cyprus on January 30-31.

Given that the title of the conference is ‘Reimagining and Rebuilding Palestine: Genocide, Trauma, and the Future of a Suffering Nation’, pro-Israel critics will doubtless accuse the study of being biased.

Nonetheless, it makes for uncomfortable reading – its overall point (to quote the Preface) being that “we appear to have reached a moment of widespread media capture and increasing media capitulation to corporate and political interests”.

“The war in Gaza,” it goes on, “has manifested how this capture and capitulation have become normalised and pervasive, as segments of the media have not dared go beyond the limits of what Israel’s long-standing and now entrenched narrative framework had shaped and permitted.

“The mechanisms of denial and diversionary cries of anti-Semitism, combined [with] the almost total ban of foreign media from the theatre of war, have resulted in insufficient reporting… and a fall back to inoffensive coverage.”

The bulk of the study is factual, simply recounting the sequence of events in Gaza from October 2023 onwards and observing how it was covered in local media by outlets such as the Cyprus Mail, Phileleftheros, Politis and Kathimerini among others.

One important aspect – which is applicable to all modern conflicts, not just Gaza – is the existence of “conflicting narratives that the warring parties articulated and put out,” making it logically inevitable that some of what’s being claimed is ‘fake news’.

Again and again, the media’s solution (not just in Cyprus, but here too) was “to present both sides separately,” as the authors put it, “comfortable that the reporting would at least be adequately ‘balanced’ and even considered fair”.

Thus, for instance, the study cites a headline from Kathimerini in August 2025, referring to the targeted killing of Al-Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and his entire camera crew.

Israel claimed he had been a Hamas operative, a claim that was problematic on many levels – both because the evidence presented was flimsy but also, not least, because Al-Sharif had been reporting almost daily on the killings since the beginning, meaning that he was in fact a full-time journalist, and a very well-known and visible one. The idea that such an industrious reporter was also a terrorist (in his spare time, presumably) was implausible, and arguably irrelevant anyway.

Still, the Kathimerini headline was as follows: “Gaza: Al Jazeera journalist dead – Israel accuses him of having leading Hamas role”. 

The Cyprus Mail isn’t exempt from criticism, of course. In our defence, and the local media’s defence generally, it should be emphasised that world news isn’t actually produced locally, being syndicated by wire services (Reuters, in our case) – and of course Israel has banned, and continues to ban, international media from actually entering the Gaza Strip to see what’s going on for themselves.

In this context, a kind of cautious both-sides-ism becomes the default option.

The Cyprus Mail did report, however, on the Nicosia protest staged in response to Al-Sharif’s assassination – just as we’ve produced many videos and news stories on pro-Palestine protests, and other videos speaking both to Israelis and Palestinians about the conflict.

All local media also widely reported on the local angles to the Gaza crisis, such as Cyprus’ ill-fated Amalthea aid corridor for Gaza and the large numbers of Israelis coming either to stay in Cyprus or using the island to travel elsewhere.

The media’s role with respect to a foreign war – even one where the warring parties are so “fundamentally mismatched,” to quote the study – may indeed be mostly to take the pulse of local society, lacking the resources to provide accurate info on what’s happening on the ground.

Then again, Gaza was (and remains) also a moral crisis – and the study pinpoints a moral timidity, mostly in adopting the “entrenched narrative” about freeing the hostages and Israel’s ‘right to self-defence’ but also, in the case of Cyprus specifically, in seldom questioning President Christodoulides’ unwavering support of our newfound ally, often framed as a weapon to be used against Turkey.

It fell mostly to columnists to grapple with the moral dimension – thus, for instance, the study notes that “the Cyprus Mail’s regular commentator Alper Ali Riza KC [who appears more than once in the text] was quick, as early as the end of October, to highlight how Israel and its allies in the West had lost what he described as ‘the moral high ground’”.

Tales From the Coffeeshop, our humorous Sunday column, also included “frequent critical pieces, including on the work of other Cypriot media when it came to Gaza”.

Still, opinion columns are no substitute for news reporting – or even editorials, which were also quite sparse and inoffensive throughout the conflict. 

Only after 18 months, when mass starvation was added to the mix – by the middle of last year, shortly before the so-called ceasefire – did newspapers, including our own, become more assertive, the overview says. “In July 2025, the Cyprus Mail apportioned Israel full responsibility for the Gaza famine,” note the authors.

Gaza is a huge, multi-sided issue, marking perhaps the culmination of a US-led world order where Western governments and institutions (and media) fell in line, grudgingly but effectively, behind a certain narrative – and many still contend it’s the right narrative, and will slam the study as unfair and bigoted.

One thing, however, seems undeniable – that, as the authors point out, the IDF’s control over the flow of information, down to actually banning journalists (even now) from entering the war zone, “would not have been tolerated by a previous generation of war correspondents and their news organisations, built on a reputation of operating independently and at huge risk, to witness and record developments for their readers or viewers”.

What’s changed? Is it just because newspapers have no money in the age of the internet? Are they just risk-averse? Or has everything become very corporate, with once-intrepid outlets now owned by tech billionaires and one-percenters?

In that sense, at least, media capture is a real thing.