Nick Wilson has been following the news of the war in Gaza closely since October. But Mr. Wilson, a Cornell student, is selective about his media diet: As a pro-Palestinian activist, he distrusts major American news reports about Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
Instead, it turns to versions less familiar with them some American audiences, such as the Arabic news network Al Jazeera.
“Al Jazeera is the site I go to to get an account of events that I believe will be credible,” he said.
Many student protesters have said in recent interviews that they seek on-the-ground coverage of the war in Gaza, and often, a staunchly pro-Palestinian perspective — and are turning to alternative media to do so. There are a number of options: Jewish Currents, The Intercept, Mondoweiss and even independent Palestinian journalists on social media as they seek information on what is happening in Gaza.
Their preferences embody a broader shift for members of Generation Z, who increasingly seek news from a wider range of sources and challenge traditional media in a fragmented media ecosystem.
Israel’s recent ban on Al Jazeera’s local operations has only raised the network’s profile among many student protesters. They prize coverage by journalists on the ground, and Al Jazeera has a more extensive operation in Gaza than any other paper. The students also noted the sacrifices he made to tell the story there. Two Al Jazeera journalists have died since the start of the war.
“Al Jazeera plays that role for a lot of younger Americans in terms of getting a different perspective than they feel they’re getting from the American media,” said Ben Toff, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Minnesota. .
While many Western media outlets, with few or no journalists in Gaza before the war, have struggled to gain access to the region, Al Jazeera has been recognized for its raw, gruesome depictions of the death and destruction there. A typical report might show video of Israeli tanks rolling into cities, alongside drone footage of flattened buildings in Gaza City and Palestinians fleeing their homes.
“It’s news about the Middle East, and they don’t really convey it with a Western perspective,” he said Alina Atiq, a student at the University of South Florida who pushed her university to divest from Israel.
The Qatar-owned network is headquartered in Doha and operates two separate newsrooms providing content in English and Arabic. Its mobile apps have been downloaded in the United States 295,000 times since October, an increase of more than 200 percent over the previous seven months, according to Appfigures, a market research firm.
Among the media outlets frequently cited by protesters, Al Jazeera English is by far the most popular on social media. He has 1.9 million followers on TikTok — up from about 750,000 at the start of the war — and 4.6 million on Instagram.
Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the Gulf Arab Institute in Washington, described the network’s Arabic channel as outwardly more pro-Palestinian than its English one, which he said has a more nuanced slant.
Critics say its coverage turns into support for armed resistance in Israel. The Israeli government, which has accused Al Jazeera of acting as a “mouthpiece” for Hamas, last Sunday seized its broadcasting equipment and shut down its operations in the country for at least 45 days.
Al Jazeera called the government’s accusation “baseless” in a statement, adding that it broadcast every press conference held by the Israeli cabinet and representatives of the Israel Defense Forces, except for videos from Hamas.
He also said his reporting “provides different viewpoints and narrative and counter-narrative” and that accusations of pro-Palestinian bias should be “examined through careful analysis of our journalistic standards and reporting practices.”
The rejection of Al Jazeera by the Israeli government appears to have boosted the network’s reputation among some of the students.
“This shows the extent to which Israel is afraid of Al Jazeera’s coverage and reporting,” said Matthew Vickers, a junior at Occidental College in Los Angeles who has been active in efforts to get his school to divest from companies that associated with Israel.
Protesters rattle off a list of mainstream American publications they find unacceptable coverage, including CNN, The Atlantic and The New York Times, among many others. Although major news outlets have extensively reported on Israel’s campaign in Gaza, the death toll and the damage, coverage from the perspective of the student protesters has not sufficiently blamed Israel for the Palestinian deaths or thoroughly scrutinized Israeli officials. And they said protest coverage has focused too much on anti-Semitism on college campuses instead of Islamophobia.
“There’s a lot of misinformation being fed to us by the mainstream media and just a clear bias when it comes to the Palestinian issue,” said Cameron Jones, a student at Columbia University and organizer of Jewish Voice for Peace. pro-Palestinian organization.
Activists’ interest in Al Jazeera contrasts with the report’s previous struggles to find an audience in the United States. The network launched an American channel in 2013, but that folded in 2016 with nightly ratings hovering around 30,000, well below the ratings for cable networks like Fox News and CNN.
Part of what condemned the network then was “a distinctly anti-American slant” in its coverage, Mr. Ibish wrote in a 2016 guest op-ed for The Times. But now, broadcasting from a different country, the network’s tone is finding an audience on college campuses, he said.
“There’s a Third World, anti-imperialist view, and that’s also the view that a lot of college kids have taken,” he said.
Jeremy W. Peters contributed to the report.
