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War & Media · March 28, 2025
The Face of War Has Gone Missing
Over 2,000 people died in Iran. More than 250 journalists were killed in Gaza. And yet, on your screen, there were only missile launchers, fighter jets, and defence ministers giving press conferences. Somewhere along the way, the human being quietly vanished from the war.
Where Did the People Go?
On February 28, America and Israel launched strikes on Iran. In the days and weeks that followed, you could find no shortage of footage — fighter jets taking off from carriers, warships cutting through oceans, missile systems painting streaks across night skies. Armies pressed their own videos into the world's news feeds, and those videos became the accepted truth of the war.
But here is what you did not see: the places where those jets dropped their bombs. The people underneath. The screaming. The running. The faces of mothers outside a school that no longer existed.
One month into the conflict, it is worth pausing to ask why. Was it an accident of logistics? A failure of access? Or was it a deliberate, systematic effort to make sure you felt nothing — that you remained unmoved, uninvested, unbothered — even as thousands of lives were being shattered in a country far away?
"A careful effort was made so that, no matter what else you worried about — the cost of cooking gas, the queue at the ration office — you would feel no sympathy for those being killed."
250 Journalists Killed. Most of Their Names You Never Heard.
Before talking about the faceless dead in Iran, it is worth remembering another category of the missing: the journalists of Gaza. The Guardian newspaper built a dedicated page on its website for them — every name, every photograph. Where there was no photograph, a bullet-proof press vest stood in its place. A press vest as gravestone.
These were the people who stood among Gaza's unarmed civilians and reported what was happening. They were the only reason the world knew anything at all — knew the names of families wiped out in a single strike, recognised the faces of children who would not see another week. They reported until bombs fell on them too.
Israel barred international journalists from entering Gaza from the very beginning. Those who were inside — local, Palestinian, freelance — were the only witnesses. And then they were killed too. Not one by one, but two hundred and fifty times over. And still, none of their photographs was shown repeatedly, insistently, the way the face of a single soldier from one side tends to be.
Iran's 2,000 Dead, and the Names We Were Never Given
Iran released photographs of the girls killed in Minab. It made posters. The incident was genuinely horrific. But those images — and the deaths of nine sailors — were made to stand in for the entire Iranian civilian toll. A nation-sized tragedy reduced to a handful of photographs.
Over 2,000 people were killed in Iran during this conflict. Their stories, their names, the neighbourhoods they lived in — none of it reached us. The families of the Minab girls were not permitted to speak publicly. No journalist walked through the rubble of their homes. Instead, Iran's own state media repeatedly released AI-generated videos depicting how Trump might attack, how devastation would unfold — synthetic grief in place of documented grief.
Iran struck a steel plant. Iran's food supply chain was attacked — a vegetable market in Larestan was bombed, reportedly to starve the population into rebellion. Medical services in cities like Mashhad and Shiraz were reportedly disrupted. We do not know the true scale. There is no ground report. There is almost no image.
Humanize. Dehumanize. The Oldest Game in War.
There are two words that define how war is communicated to the public: humanize and dehumanize. In every conflict, the side with greater media power works to dehumanize those being bombed — to ensure that viewers feel no connection to the people dying, feel no instinct to oppose the war. And a handful of courageous journalists work to humanize — to bring back the human stories that states want erased.
During the Vietnam War, media scholar Daniel Hallin documented in his book The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam how American television coverage actively promoted the war effort. Enemies were called "vermin," described in terms that stripped them of human identity. The purpose was precisely this: to prevent the television audience from forming any emotional bond with those being killed — and to instead breed the appetite for their killing.
One exception stands out: in August 1965, CBS correspondent Morley Safer travelled with American marines to Cam Ne village. What he broadcast — soldiers setting fire to thatched homes while elderly villagers and children remained inside — became a landmark in war journalism. "Burning of Cam Ne" is still available on YouTube. It was almost singular in its honesty. A later comprehensive analysis of all major US network coverage found that while hundreds of South Vietnamese villages were destroyed, almost none had their stories reported.
When the public is dehumanized enough, it stops being citizens and becomes a crowd — willing to cheer for bombing runs the way it cheers for a cricket match.
The Embedded Journalist and the Asset Balance Sheet
During the Iraq War, the Pentagon's "embedded journalist" programme placed reporters inside military units, riding tanks to the front lines. Television news from inside those tanks turned war into spectacle — America's firepower showcased like product advertising. That war was waged on the premise that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical weapons. That premise was never proven. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed. The embedded journalists were reporting military prowess while the foundational lie went largely unchallenged.
A journalist from the Boston Herald, writing about his experience embedded with a US unit, described identifying three Iraqi soldiers who were then shot dead by a sniper nearby. The account raised a question that has never been satisfactorily answered: can a journalist embedded with one side of a war report that war with any neutrality at all?
On March 26, the Wall Street Journal published a report on American military assets damaged or destroyed in the conflict — billions of dollars of equipment catalogued with concern. The human beings at the other end of those assets did not receive a comparable accounting. When Fox News asked Trump whether Iranians had food and water, he responded by telling the anchor she was beautiful and reminiscing about a lunch they once shared. That exchange, too, became news.
The Missing Ground Report
What are people eating in Tehran, in Beirut, in the cities of southern Iran right now? What do the streets of Mashhad look like today? How overwhelmed are the hospitals? Which neighbourhoods have lost power, or water, or both? Is there a ground report — any ground report — answering these questions? There is not.
In Gaza, when children began dying of malnutrition and starvation, the press was denied entry. The world learned of it through the same Palestinian journalists who were being killed one by one. At Harvard University, students knelt in the cold and read aloud the names of dead Gazan children onto plastic sheets. That act of naming — that insistence on the human — generated global sympathy and protests across dozens of cities. That is precisely why the naming is withheld. Naming is dangerous to those who are bombing.
In Gulf states hosting American military bases, people who filmed the aftermath of strikes were arrested. Meanwhile, the American Secretary of Defense stood before cameras to teach journalists how to write headlines. "Be patriotic press," he said. "Take pride in your country."
India's Press: A Study in Voluntary Silence
In 2024, American journalist Tucker Carlson — an unlikely figure in this story — released a documentary called The Bibi Files, directed by Alexis Bloom. Originally produced inside Israel, the film investigates corruption allegations against Prime Minister Netanyahu and raises pointed questions about how Hamas managed to breach one of the world's most surveilled borders on October 7. Carlson, hardly a progressive voice, nonetheless asked the questions.
No Indian news channel would broadcast this film. Even if Carlson offered it for free. There would not be the courage. In a country of 1.4 billion people, with one of the largest and most historically vibrant press traditions in the world, the media's role in covering this war — in documenting war crimes, civilian casualties, or even asking basic questions — has been negligible. Turn the pages of any mainstream Indian newspaper from the past month. Count how many ground reports there are. Count how many names of Iranian dead appear.
What you will find instead is wall-to-wall coverage of leaders: Trump on the aeroplane steps, Trump before boarding, Trump after landing. A defence secretary. A foreign minister. An analysis of geopolitical implications. The Indian press has become a kirtan recital — devotional performance for those in power, with no room for the voices underneath the bombs.
The press abandoned its purpose. And so the public abandoned the press. Both now serve someone other than the truth.
The Question We Must Sit With
Many people who consume war coverage daily consider themselves compassionate. Sensitive. They feel sorrow at personal losses, tenderness toward animals, outrage at individual cruelty. And yet, when it comes to the bombing of a country they cannot locate on a map — 2,000 dead, 5,000 wounded — they feel nothing. They discuss it with the detachment of a stock market bulletin.
This is not a failure of character. It is the outcome of a system — media and state together — that has very carefully ensured you never saw a face, never heard a name, never had the chance to feel anything. The dehumanization was not accidental. It was administered.
Animals, for all the contempt the word carries when applied to humans in war, do not drop bombs. In that specific sense, they remain more humane than we have allowed ourselves to become.
