First Draft: How the Media Manufactures Consent for War
Zeteo reviews the New York Times’s early and awful coverage of Trump’s illegal war against Iran, a new contender for 'most racist Republican' in Congress, and the Pentagon has... crabs.
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Good morning. Minnah Arshad and Andrew Perez here, marking 12 days since Donald Trump dragged us into an illegal war on Iran – and 415 days since Trump took office. But hey, just 1,045 to go… we hope…
There’s no paywall on this edition of First Draft, thanks to today’s sponsor, Incogni.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ the New York Times is covering Trump’s illegal war in Iran roughly how you’d expect, the US is bombing boats in search of lower energy prices, and the president’s worst attorney is facing ethics charges.
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Same Old Times?
The people who suffer the most in US wars have generally been mentioned last and least by America’s so-called paper of record. With Trump’s illegal war on Iran, history is repeating itself.
According to a Zeteo analysis, the New York Times underrepresented Iranian victims in its early coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran. The Times published over 100 articles on the Iran war in its Middle East section in the first four days. Only 18 of the 103 stories Zeteo analyzed mentioned Iranian victims, compared to 29 that mentioned casualties for the US, Israel, or Gulf countries.
Bear in mind that Iranians make up 97% of the victims in this war so far.
And most of the Times’s initial coverage also avoided noting that Trump’s war is illegal to begin with.
When the Times did report on Iranian victims in its early coverage of the war, the paper mostly used passive language – some of it mangled. In a March 3 article, the Times wrote: “The war has pressed forward, expanding across the Middle East and yielding hundreds of casualties, including among Iran’s top leadership.”
Compare that with a Times report on Israeli victims: “One man stood crying in the ghastly aftermath of an Iranian missile strike that killed at least nine people in central Israel on Sunday afternoon, the worst casualty toll in the country after two days of conflict with Iran.”
This is what manufacturing consent looks like.
The paper did try to address readers’ criticisms of its war coverage in a Q&A with the editor who is reportedly helming war coverage, published Monday.
The story acknowledged that “several readers argued that we initially underplayed” the Feb. 28 attack on the elementary school in Minab compared to Iran’s attacks on Israel. It is worth noting that the first story on the school massacre appeared not on the front page of the paper but on page 11. Yet Adrienne Carter, a senior editor on the Times’s International desk, said the school attack was a “priority” while arguing that the paper had less access to on-the-ground reporting in Iran compared to Israel.
On another question about passive versus active voice, Carter said “language evolves” and “initial claims don’t always bear out.”
The coverage of this war from the US media as a whole has been embarrassing in many ways. The Washington Post on Tuesday, for instance, published a piece asserting that it’s a pro-Iranian “conspiracy theory” to argue “that Trump attacked Iran to distract the public from the Epstein files.”
The paper cited an executive from the Anti-Defamation League who expressed concern that social media users are calling Trump’s Iran war “Operation Epstein Fury,” rather than by the president’s preferred branding: “Operation Epic Fury.”
“An ADL report found that the phrase ‘Epstein Fury’ was mentioned more than 90,000 times by some 60,000 different accounts on X within the conflict’s first three days,” the Post reported, somehow keeping a straight face.
Of course, some mainstream journalists, including at the Times, are working to hold the Trump administration accountable. Times reporter Shawn McCreesh specifically pressed Trump on why he chose to claim Iran was responsible for the attack on the Iranian school.
“You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war,” McCreesh said Monday. “But you’re the only person in your government saying this.” His questioning caused Trump to, for one moment, stop lying. “I just don’t know enough about it,” Trump responded, before saying he will “live with” the results of his administration’s investigation into the school attack.
A spokesperson for the Times tells Zeteo that the paper “has written on the legality of President Trump’s attacks on Iran through a domestic and international lens, and asked questions of Trump directly, among reporting on many other topics.” The spokesperson noted the paper has published “multiple pieces of forensic reporting on the likely US strike on an Iranian school,” adding: “We have done all of this reporting fairly, thoroughly, and without bias.”
Nevertheless, the Times may not have learned its lesson from the lead-up to the Iraq War, when its reporting helped sell the Bush administration’s lies about WMDs. Over the weekend, the paper helped justify Trump’s Iran war with blind quotes from “officials” who suggested that “Iran or potentially another group” may have been able to access the uranium at sites after Trump’s administration bombed them last year.
The Times also still employs Gaza genocide apologist Bret Stephens, whose first column headline on the Iran war read: “Trump and Netanyahu Are Doing the Free World a Favor.”
It’s the same paper that instructed reporters to avoid words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” when reporting on Palestine, and to this day, fails to recognize what the world’s leading genocide scholars have concluded: that Israel is indeed committing a genocide in Gaza.
The Times famously issued a half-hearted apology for its coverage of Iraq. In a May 2004 letter, Times editors wrote, “Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged – or failed to emerge.”
More than two decades later, the paper is once again failing to be aggressive in covering another US president’s baseless war.
🇮🇷 Iran War Updates
Death tolls:
Iran: More than 1,300 people, including over 200 children and 11 health workers, have been killed in US-Israeli strikes, an Iranian official said.
Lebanon: Israel has killed at least 570 people, including scores of children, Lebanon’s health officials said today.
US troops: Seven US troops have been killed since the war began (an eighth service member died of a “health-related incident” in Kuwait, US Central Command said, without elaborating). The Pentagon said yesterday that some 140 troops have been wounded, mostly with minor injuries.
Israel: At least 12 people have been killed in Iranian attacks in Israel.
Elsewhere in the region: More than a dozen others have been killed across the region.
And in more Iran war news…
Bombing boats: The US said it had “eliminated” multiple boats, including 16 vessels it claimed were “minelayers,” in the area around the Strait of Hormuz just hours after Trump demanded that Iran remove any mines it laid, or risk “military consequences” that were “never seen before.”
Whoops: Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright claimed on Twitter that the Navy “successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure oil remains flowing to global markets” – causing oil prices to temporarily drop. The only problem? It wasn’t true, as the White House quickly acknowledged.
Iran’s new targets: Tehran said today that it could soon target banks and financial institutions associated with US and Israeli entities in the region.
‘Nearly 20,000’ civilian sites damaged: Iran’s Red Crescent said today that nearly 20,000 civilian sites, including dozens of schools and health facilities, had been damaged since the start of the war.
Really Racist Republican, Exhibit 374
GOP Congressman Andy Ogles is doubling down on his vicious Islamophobia. After claiming on Monday that “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” the attention-seeking Ogles went further on Tuesday, saying millions of Muslim Americans are “unable to assimilate” and “all have to go back.” Is it any surprise that the Tennessee lawmaker’s rhetoric is getting more and more extreme and bigoted, given the Republican Party’s leadership refuses to condemn him? Speaker Mike Johnson shamefully declined to criticize or disown Ogles’s remarks yesterday. Apparently, it’s okay to sound like a neo-Nazi in the modern GOP.
🗞️ What You Need to Know
Don’t call it ‘mass deportation’: On Tuesday, Trump’s White House advised lawmakers to focus their messaging on deporting violent criminals, rather than mass deportation – even though that remains Trump’s policy.
ICE at the polls: The Democratic National Committee is suing the Trump administration to get answers on whether it’s planning to deploy Trump’s masked, violent secret police or troops to the polls during this year’s midterms. The lawsuit says federal agencies have failed to respond to public records requests on the issue.
Election threats: The Department of Homeland Security’s investigative branch has started investigating the 2020 election results in Arizona, reportedly on “direction from DC.” It’s the latest indication of how Trump is planning to wield the whole of the federal government to meddle in the 2026 midterms.
Always be losing: Ed Martin, Trump’s former US attorney and current pardon attorney, is facing ethics charges from the DC Bar for attempting to unlawfully coerce Georgetown University Law Center to stop teaching “DEI” – and for attempting to quash a complaint over the matter by privately communicating with the judge.
🧠 Pop Quiz!
How much money did Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon spend on Alaskan king crab in September?
Keep your eyes out for the answer below!
💬 Quote Unquote
“While there is no money for 15 million Americans who lost their healthcare, there’s a billion dollars a day to spend on bombing Iran.”
– That’s Senator Elizabeth Warren slamming Trump’s illegal war with Iran.
🚨 Don’t Miss It!
Later today, we’ll have an exclusive poll from our friends at Data for Progress, which we commissioned with Drop Site News, on the American public’s attitude towards the war on Iran, whether they think it was launched to distract from the Epstein files, and whether politicians who support this war will pay a political penalty at the polls. It will land in your inbox in a few hours!
🌏 Anywhere But America
🇵🇸 Don’t forget Gaza: Palestinians in Gaza are grappling with expensive food prices as the US-Israel war on Iran puts further strain on the already-limited supply of basic necessities. According to Al Jazeera, “Residents and traders say prices have jumped in a matter of days, while some staples have become scarce or disappeared altogether.”
🇭🇹 Illegal drone strikes: More than 1,200 people in Haiti were killed in drone strikes by Haitian security forces and private contractors between March 2025 and January 2026, including at least 17 children and 43 adults who were not members of criminal groups, according to Human Rights Watch. The group called for these unlawful killings to be investigated under international law.
🇸🇸 UN calls for a ceasefire: UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk called for an immediate ceasefire in South Sudan after more than 160 civilians were killed over the past 17 days. Türk warned that “civilians are being brutally killed, injured, and displaced on a daily basis,” and that the violence “may amount to war crimes.”
🇺🇦🇷🇺 Territorial gains: Russian and Ukrainian officials made rival claims of territorial gains as US-brokered peace talks are seemingly on pause. Ukraine said it has retaken nearly all of the Dnipropetrovsk region, while Russia said it has pushed further into the eastern Donbas region.
🦊 Fox Watch
Noted military expert Jesse Watters thinks the US bombing a girl’s school and Israel bombing oil depots is evidence of a ‘compassionately’ fought war…
🧠 Trivia answer: $2 million, according to the nonprofit transparency group, Open the Books.
ICYMI From Zeteo
Zeteo’s Melanie Riehl and Akshay Gokul contributed to this newsletter.
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Anyone still looking towards the NYT, WaPo, LAT and other compliant complicit legacy media for the truth is clearly living in the same bubble as the “politics-as-usual” folks like Schumer and Jeffries. Thank goodness for Zeteo and other independent journalists. Thank goodness for elected officials who are speaking up and acting defiantly.
Would love to see a similar analysison the BBC. They are widely considered the least biased legacy media source so they would be a great baseline.