Abstract: This study examines the drivers of Western media coverage of humanitarian solidarity initiatives for Gaza, focusing on the June 2025 voyage of the Madleen ship aimed at breaking the Israeli blockade on the territory. It investigates the newsworthiness attributed to this initiative in major Western media outlets, the extent to which a human rights-based approach is present in its coverage, and the influence of ideological beliefs and geopolitical alliances of communicators on its narrative representation and discursive construction in news reports from France24 and the BBC. The study is situated at the intersection of war, media and human rights, and is grounded in the concept of the “ mediatic construction of human rights ” , which conceptualises news as an ideological structure and human rights as a powerful cognitive reference framework in Western societies. Methodologically, the study combines discourse analysis of news values with a socio-cognitive approach to news production. Theoretically, it draws on three main frameworks: news values theory, agenda-setting theory and critical discourse analysis. The findings highlight the ideological nature of news values in both France24 and BBC coverage, and the dominance of the Israeli political and media agenda in shaping news values and narrative representations of the initiative. This results in cautious and evasive journalistic narratives that reveal a form of “ discursive dependency ” on the Israeli narrative, along with editorial bias toward it. The study also shows how this coverage exposes the erosion of legal frameworks and the selective deployment of human rights discourse, effectively diverting attention from the humanitarian nature of the initiative and justifying the Israeli attack on the ship’s crew, the prevention of aid delivery to Gaza and the minimisation of its severity. Keywords: Mediatisation of Human Rights, Newsworthiness, Discursive Construction, International Media Narrative, Humanitarian Aid Solidarity Vessels.
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