Unchilding
Unchilding refers to the deliberate erasure of the childhood or youth of victims of Arab, Palestinian, or other minority origin in Western news and media. The term was first used with respect to Palestinian victims by Palestinian academic Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian.[1] Contrast with "childing", where entities favored by the press and the media are described in terms such as "child" or "teenager" even when they are, for example, soldiers in the IDF.
Examples in news media[edit | edit source]
Palestinian youth were often the subject of unchilding in media reports covering the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza and the Palestinain Genocide.
- A CNN reporter referred to six-year-old Hind Rajab as "a woman who was killed in Gaza". [2][3]
- A Sky News reporter, in addition to trivializing the IDF's killing of children by insisting on using adjectives such as "accidental" and characterizing without proof the killing as "a stray bullet found its way into the van ahead", continued to describe the killing of a Palestinian child in Gaza as "a three- or four-year-old young lady"[4]
- BBC World News described the victims of an Israeli raid on the south Lebanese town of Al-Bissarieh near Sidon as "a two-year old girl and a sixteen-year-old woman".[5]
- ↑ Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2019). Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108555470.
- ↑ "Students Barricaded Inside Columbia's Hamilton Hall". CNN This Morning. CNN. April 30, 2024. Archived from the original on May 2, 2024.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ↑ "Transcript: Student Barricade Inside Columbia's Hamilton Hall". CNN This Morning. April 30, 2024. Archived from the original on October 16, 2024.
- ↑ "IDF says it has completed mission in north Gaza". Sky News. January 8, 2024. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
- ↑ "Lebanon says three killed in Israeli raids in southern Lebanon". BBC News. October 12, 2024. Archived from the original on October 12, 2024.