According to a United Nations report released in June, Israel has destroyed more than half of all religious and cultural sites in Gaza. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said of the findings that attacks on cultural sites, including museums, mosques, and archaeological landmarks, hinder Palestinian self-determination and will have impacts for generations to come. Although it is known that the destruction of cultural and religious sites serves to erase historical connections to the land, the issue is rarely the focus of nuanced reporting, according to human rights journalist Mischa Geracoulis.In her new book Media Framing and the Destruction and Cultural Heritage (Routledge, 2025), Geracoulis, who is the managing editor of the media literacy organization Project Censored, argues that the way in which assaults on heritage are presented to the public is critical to linking these attacks to atrocity crimes, including genocide and war crimes.Narratives that engage in victim blaming surrounding cultural heritage exacerbate dehumanizing treatment in Gaza, Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh), and beyond, she explains in her text, which examines how news narratives around heritage attacks inform humanitarian responses. “There’s just been so little coverage,” Geracoulis said in an interview with Hyperallergic, characterizing Western media reports on cultural destruction in those regions. “It’s been more of an absence of coverage than just glaring mistakes.” Geracoulis pointed to a failure of major media organizations to frame the destruction of cultural sites in both Gaza and Artsakh as human rights violations. Framing, referring to the journalistic perspective of certain events, involves both the journalist’s perspective and what is included or excluded from a story. Her new book, which is geared primarily toward students and academics, is part of Routledge’s series on media and humanitarianism.The media coverage that does contend with heritage attacks, Geracoulis said, often parrots propagandized official rhetoric. Geracoulis points to oversimplified Western news narratives as informing lackluster efforts to halt cultural destruction or further dehumanization of the oppressed. Checking the framing of a story, Geracoulis said, is equally important to standard fact-checking. Relying heavily on official spokespeople to report on the destruction of cultural heritage might portray a reality different from “on the ground” reporting, Geracoulis told Hyperallergic. Instead, journalists should provide historical and geographic context and solicit information from the ground. Khatchkars in the Dadivank monastic complex in 2015 (photo Yelena Ambartsumian/Hyperallergic) Credit: All photos by the authorGeracoulis’s family emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century as a direct result of the Armenian Genocide from 1915 to 1923, during which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated under the Ottoman government. After the genocide, Ottoman-allied Azerbaijan razed Armenian heritage from Nakhichevan, a territory given to the country by the Soviets, from which it expelled Armenians. By 1924, 10,000 medieval Armenian cross-stones, called khachkars, located in the largest ancient Armenian gravesite, were reportedly reduced to 3,000. Khachkars contain devotional depictions of Jesus’s crucifixion, and each one is unique. The Azerbaijani military has reportedly been filmed intentionally destroying these stone crosses in Artsakh.Azerbaijan seized the formerly autonomous Armenian territory of Artsakh in 2024, displacing more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians from the region. In 2022, Azerbaijan violated its ceasefire with Armenia and Russia by blocking the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. The blockade prevented the flow of necessities, prompting the former chief International Criminal Court prosecutor to warn that a genocide was being committed. Turkey and Azerbaijan, which are closely allied, deny the Armenian Genocide. (Biden became the first US president to recognize the Armenian Genocide in 2021.)Geracoulis also traces the lack of accountability for the Armenian Genocide as paving the way for Azerbaijan’s ongoing destruction. Among the landmarks in Gaza destroyed by Israel’s military, according to the UN, was the Great Omari Mosque, the oldest on the strip. A quote from an anonymous Israeli official cited in NPR’s reporting stated that the mosque “contained a tunnel shaft used by militants,” an accusation frequently made by the Israeli military when it targets civilian hubs and heritage sites. The UN report commission also documented allegations of artifact looting from the Pasha Palace Museum, built in the 13th century and home to artifacts of local archaeology, the Israa University museum, and a warehouse belonging to the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jerusalem. While international human rights responses to these attacks might be limited, media organizations can influence governments to act on crimes of cultural destruction, Geracoulis writes. At best, major media can activate what Geracoulis dubs the “toolbox of international relations.” But narratives that frame victims as complicit in aggravated assault on their cultural heritage promote a view of humanitarian aid and other actions as unwarranted. Cultural heritage should be “part of an ongoing conversation, not … novelty news items,” that frames atrocity with more nuance.“Language and stories around cultural heritage have geopolitical implications,” Geracoulis writes. “Because conflict is often justified through historical narratives, and because cultural heritage is tied to identity and homeland, stories around cultural heritage may be purposed to either legitimate or exploit geopolitical aims.”