In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP President Lara Friedman speaks with Dr. Assal Rad and Professor Marc Owen Jones — two of the most prominent voices and most astute analysts of the role that media and disinformation have played post Oct 7, 2023 — and continue to play through the present day, in manufacturing consent for Israel’s war on Gaza as well as its wider military campaigns and territorial expansion in Lebanon and Syria. The conversation centered on Dr. Rad’s article, How Western Media Has Manufactured Consent for Atrocities, From Iraq to Gaza ( published 3/4/25); and Professor Jones’s peer-reviewed analysis in Third World Quarterly, Evidencing alethocide: Israel’s war on truth in Gaza (published 3/1/25).
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Recorded on March 13, 2025
Dr. Assal Rad is a scholar of Middle East history and a non-resident fellow at DAWN. She works on research and writing related to U.S. foreign policy issues, the Middle East, contemporary Iran and Israel-Palestine. Dr. Rad graduated with a PhD in Middle Eastern History from the University of California, Irvine in 2018. Her PhD research focused on modern Iran, with an emphasis on national identity formation and popular culture in post-revolutionary Iran. She is the author of The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Her writing can be seen in Newsweek, The National Interest, The Independent, Foreign Policy, The American Prospect and more. She has appeared as a commentator on BBC World, CNN, Al Jazeera, NPR, and others. In 2021, Rad was selected for both the Middle East Policy Council’s 40 Under 40 Awards and Out in National Security’s Leaders List. Follow her on X/Twitter: @AssalRad.
Professor Marc Owen Jones is an associate professor of media analytics at Northwestern University in Qatar, where he specializes in researching and lecturing on disinformation, digital authoritarianism, and political repression. His recent work has focused on investigating social media disinformation and harassment campaigns emanating from or targeting the Middle East. Jones has a prolific publication record, including two single-authored books: Political Repression in Bahrain, published by Cambridge University Press (2020), and Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation, and Social Media, published by Hurst Books and Oxford University Press (2022). He has also edited several key volumes on Bahrain and the Gulf, such as Gulfization of the Arab World (Gerlach Press, 2018) and Bahrain’s Uprising (Zed Books, 2015). In addition to his academic roles, Jones is a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Council for Global Affairs. His expertise in digital repression, disinformation, and human rights has led to non-resident fellowships with the NGO Democracy for the Middle East Now and the Committee for Academic Freedom at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). His work on combating Islamophobia and hate speech has also earned him an affiliate position at the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University. Jones is known for his pioneering analysis of disinformation campaigns. From identifying dozens of fake journalists in a 2020 joint investigation with The Daily Beast to uncovering state-sponsored bots aimed at influencing U.S. politicians, his investigative work has garnered significant attention. His analysis of disinformation surrounding the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was recognized by The New York Times in their “quote of the day” on October 20th, 2018. Additionally, his investigative thoroughness led him to challenge the U.K. Foreign Office in a tribunal over information regarding a British policeman accused of torture in Bahrain during the 1970s. The tribunal was featured by Reuters in 2015. Follow Marc on X/Twitter: @marcowenjones
Resources & Further Reading
Assal Rad in Zeteo 7/18/24: I Fixed the New York Times’ Pro-Israel Headlines on Gaza
Assal Rad interviews/podcasts/webinars:
- Jadaliyya Webinar 7/25/24: Deconstructing Western Media Narratives: Israel’s War/Genocide in Gaza, Featuring: Assal Rad,Moderator: Bassam Haddad, Adel Iskandar
- Al Jazeera English 5/26/24: Assal Rad: The headline fixer | The Listening Post
- TRT World 4/11/24: Scholar exposes Western media’s Gaza slant through ‘fixed’ headlines [“Analysing what she calls a biased coverage on Israel’s war on besieged Gaza in the mainstream Western media, Assal Rad seeks to set the record straight by rewriting media headlines.”]
- FMEP’s Occupied Thoughts podcast 2/29/24: How Mainstream Media Collaborates with Israel’s War on Gaza, ft. Assal Rad
- Owen Jones YouTube series 2/14/24: How Gaza Destroyed The Media’s Legitimacy? – w/. Assal Rad
Marc Owen Jones at Al Jazeera:
- 2/13/24: Fact or fiction? Israel’s evacuation plan for the Palestinians in Rafah [“Israel does not intend to ‘evacuate’ Palestinians from Rafah to safety. It seeks to kill or deport them.”]
- 12/10/23: Fact or fiction: Is Israel really rounding up ‘Hamas fighters’?
- 12/4/23: Fact or fiction? Israeli maps and AI do not save Palestinian lives
- 11/27/23: Fact or Fiction: The propaganda war won’t stop, even during a truce
- 11/17/23: Fact or Fiction: Israel needs fake nurses to justify killing Gaza babies
- 10/16/23: Analysis: Why is so much anti-Palestinian disinformation coming from India?
Marc Owen Jones at The New Arab