As the U.S. war with Iran rages, mainstream media’s slow response to a probable U.S. attack on an Iranian school suggests it is hesitant to report on the conflict’s growing human toll.
The attack occurred on February 28 in Minab, Iran, and killed at least 165 people — mostly school-aged children. Although the U.S. stresses it would not deliberately attack a school, subsequent investigation by American military investigators points the finger at Washington, as do remnants of a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile recovered from the site. (Only the U.S., the UK, and Australia have Tomahawk missiles.) CBS news reported that the strike on the school might have been an accident, perhaps sprung from outdated intelligence wrongly identifying it as still part of a nearby Iranian base.
Although the Trump administration says it is investigating the attack, President Trump has repeatedly asserted that an Iranian misfire, rather than a U.S. attack, was behind it.
That assertion is now sparking critical questions from reporters. As New York Times reporter Shawn McCreese pressed President Trump yesterday: “You just suggested Iran got a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that. Why are you the only person saying this?”
That forced Trump to admit he “didn’t know enough” about the school attack, but would accept the findings of an investigation on it. “Whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report,” Trump said yesterday.
But the skepticism has been slow to arrive, and the press has ultimately made some critical stumbles covering the school attack. On NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, Kristen Welker toed the U.S. line, asking Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi: “President Trump said Iran is responsible for [the school] strike. What is your response?” After Araghchi responded that the U.S. likely struck the school, Welker pressed him for evidence — failing to mention reporting suggesting the U.S. was behind the attack.
Moreover, the school attack did not at first receive substantive coverage in major outlets, despite its severity. As media analyst Adam Johnson observed on his Substack, the attack did not garner any front page coverage by New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal from February 28 through March 4.
“I am really shocked at the almost non-reporting…of the striking of a school in Iran in which 80–100 children may have been killed,” Ben de Pear, a former editor at Channel 4 News, wrote on social media. “I fear that we have become so inured to the killing of children in Gaza, that the destruction of the [girls’] school” has been “completely drowned out.”
“In the days that followed [the attack], you could watch the wall-to-wall coverage on U.S. cable news networks for hours, including the supposedly more progressive MS Now, and not see anything about the atrocity — even though there was plenty of visual evidence available,” observed James North, Mondoweiss’ Editor at Large.
As Gregory Shupak, who teaches media studies at the University of Guelph in Canada, tells RS, many articles covering the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran do not even mention the school attack. Shupak used the media aggregator Factiva to assess how much the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post have covered the incident. These outlets published 318 pieces that mentioned both Iran and the U.S. between from March 1 to March 9, but only 59 of those articles contained the word school, according to Shupak.
“That’s just 19%,” he said. “In other words, 81% of the material these outlets have run on the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression overlooks this horrific massacre, which suggest[s] that they don’t think the slaughter is terribly important or a crime that ought to have a major impact on how their audiences understand the war and its stakes.”
“This atrocity has received far too little attention in coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran,” Shupak stressed.
Senators Brian Schatz (D - Hawaii), Patty Murray (D - Wash.), Jeanne Shaheen (D - N.H.), Jack Reed (D - R.I.), Mark Warner (D - Va.), and Chris Coons (D - Del.), released a statement demanding a probe into the school attack Sunday, signaling public anger over it is growing.
“The killing of school children is appalling and unacceptable under any circumstance. This incident is particularly concerning in light of Secretary Hegseth’s openly cavalier approach to the use of force, including his statement that U.S. strikes in Iran wouldn’t be bound by ‘stupid rules of engagement,’ in his words,” the lawmakers wrote.
