>It's become apparent that the Israeli political/war/propaganda machine has an incredible amount of influence - far beyond anything I'd personally imagined could be possible. They've been able to effectively commandeer most of the West's "traditional" mass media
Why make up blatant lies like this when mainstream media has been very critical of Israel for the past few weeks? The only exception is Fox News.
"Blatant lies"? It's my opinion, based on what I see here in the UK, and what I see coming from the US. And what I see is not very critical of Israel's actions at all. Sometimes there's a "surface" of it, but invariably with language that both diminishes Israel's culpability and dehumanises Palestinians.
Hell, I still see Western media repeating the untruths of mass raprs, babies hung on clothes lines etc, even though they were debunked a long time ago, and even Israel now admits those events didn't happen and, furthermore, admits many civilians were killed by Israeli helicopter and tank fire on October 7th.
I will say I've noticed a small improvement in the past week or two, with publication of many more stories of the horrors of what Israel is doing in Gaza, and some improvement in language use.
Nice strawman you got there - as I'm sure you're aware, I didn't say anything of the sort. Hamas (or at least, Palestinian militants) definitely murdered and kidnapped civilians on Oct 7th - those atrocities are bad enough without having to make up stories of torture (released hostages say there were treated well), mass rape, burned civilians (we know know there were killed by tanks and helicopters), etc.
Why make up blatant lies like this when mainstream media has been very critical of Israel for the past few weeks? The only exception is Fox News.