When Silence Becomes Complicity: The Unseen Faces of War

By Paul Duffy

For three years, I worked as a picture editor for two major tabloids. Every day, I sifted through thousands of images—many from war zones. I’ve seen what most people never will: bodies scattered across streets, children pulled from rubble, medics collapsing in grief beside lifeless patients. Most of these images were never published. It wasn’t too graphic, too political, or too much. It was just the truth—uncomfortable, inconvenient, and impossible to ignore. I started my career in editorial at the onset of the Ukraine war. We ran images daily: bombed apartment blocks, families sheltering underground, the skeletal remains of Mariupol. We had the green light to tell that story—and we did, as we should have. But Gaza? That was different. Not because it wasn’t newsworthy. It was. It is. The difference was political inconvenience.

And in this industry, that changes everything.

Why do some wars dominate front pages while others barely register? It’s not for lack of coverage. Footage from Gaza floods social media daily: flattened neighbourhoods, overwhelmed hospitals, families burying their dead. Scroll TikTok for ten minutes and you’ll see more raw, unfiltered truth than in a week’s worth of mainstream news. And yet, major Western outlets remain cautious. Silent. We’re told it’s about "editorial standards" or "impartiality."
It’s not. It’s about fear—fear of backlash, fear of losing advertisers, fear of stepping outside the approved narrative.

When Gary Lineker described Gaza as “the worst thing I’ve seen in my lifetime,” he wasn’t praised for his humanity. He was branded extreme. In today’s climate, condemning the killing of children is considered controversial. Meanwhile, institutions like the BBC double down on so-called “balance.” Reporters are discouraged from describing mass civilian deaths as war crimes without legal approval. But how do you "balance" a massacre? When one side commands fleets, drones, and diplomatic immunity, and the other starves in tents, “balance” becomes a euphemism for denial.
And silence becomes complicity.

In Britain, even legal accountability is quietly undermined. When Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar visited London, reports suggest the UK government blocked an arrest warrant. When MP Zarah Sultana asked Keir Starmer whether he intervened to protect “an unindicted war criminal,” he answered simply: “I didn’t.” But where was the media scrutiny? Where are the headlines? Instead, front pages drown in royal gossip, celebrity scandal, and festival fashion.
It’s not that people can’t care—it’s that we are distracted by design.

As the U.S. redeploys combat-ready troops to the Middle East, signalling escalation, much of the press fails to connect the dots. Even when violence is reported, language sanitises it. Journalists in Gaza are being killed at record rates. Hospitals are reduced to rubble. Children vanish beneath airstrikes.
Still, we hesitate to call these acts crimes. Why? Worse still, those who dare to speak face smear campaigns. Artists, athletes, whistleblowers—anyone who breaks from the narrative—are branded dangerous. Civilians become suspects. Truth-tellers become threats. This is the war on truth. And it’s winning. This is not a new story. Israel’s long, well-documented history of "investigating" itself has produced little more than theatre. Without real accountability, these investigations are meaningless.

Save the Children UK recently said:

“The UK Government continues to play its part in this war on children by supplying arms transfers to the Government of Israel, including parts for F-35 fighter jets... These jets are being used right now by Israeli forces to bomb and kill children in Gaza.”

And as analyst Trita Parsi asked:

“Do we have any other examples of a country dropping bombs on refugees in tents?”

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They are cries for humanity—and for justice.

Alice Walker once wrote:

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

That line haunts me. Because we do have power. As journalists, editors, readers, voters—we all have a role to play. But first, we must be brave enough to confront the truth, however uncomfortable. I don't write this to condemn reporters. Many are doing their best under impossible conditions. But the system is broken. And we owe it to Gaza. To Ukraine. To Sudan. To Yemen.To every place razed and ignored. We owe it to ourselves not to look away.

Because history won’t remember the headlines we ran. It will remember the ones we refused to print.

Photography: Pexels