The War Report: Israel/Palestine in German and American Media Coverage

The American Council on Germany and the Goethe-Institut are holding a series of events across the United States highlighting how German and American journalists see political and social developments in Germany, the United States, and internationally. Our guests will take a step back from the stories they follow day to day and address a range of topics that affect citizens in both countries. Following the events, the discussions will be released as podcasts. Since the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on southern Israel, the Israel-Hamas War and humanitarian crisis in Gaza have dominated headlines around the world. But how has news coverage itself shaped global attitudes towards the conflict, and how can journalism provide the basis for holding shared conversations about a polarizing issue? In this discussion, journalists Hanno Hauenstein, Ben Mauk, and Alena Jabarine will examine similarities and differences in American and German reporting on Israel/Palestine, including the dominance of corporate media, ideological bias within the newsroom, and the roles of social media and misinformation. 
 
PARTICIPANT BIOS
 
Hanno Hauenstein is a Berlin-based journalist and author. He worked as a senior editor in Berliner Zeitung’s culture department, specializing in contemporary art and politics, and has written for the Guardian, the Intercept, Haaretz, the Nation, and other publications. He is also founder and editor of the Hebrew-German arts journal aviv Magazine. 

Alena Jabarine is a German Palestinian freelance journalist based in Hamburg. She has worked as a political journalist for ten years, mostly for the German Public Broadcast ARD. From 2020 to 2023, she lived in the occupied West Bank, where she worked for a German political foundation and reported on her private Instagram account about political realities and everyday life on the ground. Particularly since October 7th, Jabarine has been one of the few Palestinian voices in German public discourse.

Ben Mauk is a writer, filmmaker, and journalist. His work appears in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. He is a current National Fellow at New America and a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar, and is a winner of the Emmy Award and Peabody Award, among other honors. He teaches at Case Western Reserve University, where he is the Shirley Wormser Professor of Journalism and Media Writing. He lives in Berlin, Germany and Cleveland, Ohio.