What the Media Is Not Telling You About Its Coverage of Gaza
Generally, journalistic standards have been in significant, exponential decline. Dishonesty about coverage of the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war shows how bad it has become.
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A small perk when I began my journalism career was that I could sit in the office and read stories from newswires such as Reuters and the Associated Press.
This was back when sauropods roamed the earth, before the internet, so I had access to global news stories that few others did.
Stories out of Israel would often have a line at the bottom that read, “This story has been reviewed by Israeli military censors.” I used to wonder if there was something they were barred from reporting. The word “reviewed” made it ambiguous as to whether the censors had demanded changes and/or omissions, or had just read and cleared it.
It was considered good journalist practice then to inform readers when you could not report fully and freely. Restrictions are often imposed in war zones to ensure no information that could benefit the enemy is published. In authoritarian regimes, restrictions serve to curb criticism and keep the regime in power.
I have written stories from Indonesia — today a democracy, but back then a Right-wing dictatorship — in which I added a line at the end saying that my story was written “under the supervision of the Ministry of Information.”
I can tell you, those guys at the ministry did not mess around. There were things I could not report, and I wanted to readers to know that, to help them read between the lines. My editors would rightly insist on this.
By contrast, reading the news from Gaza today, you will note that no indication is given that all information is subject to Hamas control and censorship.
Media titles try to skirt the issue by saying that the information comes from the Hamas-run Health Ministry, or similar Hamas-related entities. However, simply sourcing information does not make it credible, or accurate. Hamas are baby-murdering Jihadists. Truthful reporting is the last thing they want.
This is ironic because, for example, The New York Times recently ran a marketing campaign (they are a business, after all) titled: “The Truth Is Worth It” — with the aim of bringing “to light the danger, bravery, perseverance and determination that it takes to be a New York Times journalist and ultimately how that helps people better understand the world.”
“There are New York Times journalists out there doing everything it takes to get the story and bring back the truth to help me understand the world — the subscription and the truth are worth it,” according to Droga5, the advertising agency that designed this campaign. “The truth doesn’t report itself.”
Journalists at The New York Times and other outlets could add a line at the end of stories saying, “Hamas controls all information that comes out of Gaza.” The choose not to do so because they know it would undermine their credibility. And because, you know, “the truth doesn’t report itself.”1
Today, for example, The New York Times reported: “Israeli Strikes Kill Several People in Central and Southern Gaza” — adding, “The strikes hit a United Nations school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat, central Gaza, and a site in the Mawasi area in Khan Younis, further south. Gaza’s health ministry said both strikes resulted in casualties.”
And on July 9th, The New York Times reported: “At Least 25 Reported Killed in Israeli Airstrike in Southern Gaza” — adding, “Gaza health authorities said dozens more were injured, many critically.”
In both instances (and many, many others) there is no mention of Hamas being a filthy lying terrorist organization that controls all information coming out of Gaza. What great truth-reporting journalism work.
Of course, we do not need to rely on the data published by Hamas to know that innocent people are being killed. After all, digging into civilian homes, schools, mosques, and hospitals is the method that Hamas has developed and perfected, more than any terrorist organization in the world. But killing innocent people is not proof of a war crime.
International law, it should be noted, does not prohibit harming terrorists just because they are hiding among civilian populations, and vice versa. International law states that “the existence of a protected person shall not be used as a reason to inoculate certain points or areas from military operations.”2 Therefore, harming innocents is the responsibility of Hamas. And only Hamas.
But don’t tell that to most media outlets around the world, which take the numbers and images of Palestinian deaths — including so-called journalists’ deaths — at face value and deliver them via virtue-signaling TV anchors, reporters, and talking heads mostly enjoying the confines of far-far-away cozy and comfortable studios. They regret the deaths, pretend to care, and think out-loud in empty banalities, like: “Why can’t we all get along?” and “I thought there were no more wars.”
The reality is we do not have credible information about most of the dead. In general, many thousands are surely Hamas members, operatives, servants, and co-conspirators. And only a few make it to the headlines.
One of those few is Hamza Dahdouh, the son of veteran Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh. Hamza, who is also classified as a journalist, and Mustafa Turia, a videographer working for the global news agency AFP, were killed during an Israeli strike on a vehicle that they were both in.
Harming journalists during wars, as we know, gets an extra boost of global media attention and thus public opinion. And when it comes to the Jewish state, much of the international press seeks information that aligns with the “Israel story,” a story of Jewish moral failure. The news media’s editorial line, predominantly, is that the conflict is Israel’s fault, and the Palestinians and the Arab world are blameless. As such, the uglier characteristics of Palestinian society are mostly untouched.
This charade serves the media’s interests, but misleads the public. Journalists dutifully report fabrications and know the content is self-aggrandizing manipulations that fail to inform the public about the more complex (and thus harder to explain) issues of history, policy, fraud and corruption, and geopolitics.
Even U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has communicated in such a pathetic way, basing his public reactions on Hamas-provided information.
“I regret from the bottom of my heart the killing of Hamza,” said Blinken at a recent press conference in Doha, Qatar (the country which founded and predominantly runs the Islamist mouthpiece, Al Jazeera). “I’m a parent myself,” added Blinken, “and it’s a tragedy. I am deeply, deeply sorry for the almost unimaginable loss. Too many innocents have been killed.”
Too many? How does he know? Does Blinken also rely on data from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry?
And what really happened to Hamza? Why did the IDF launch a missile that killed the vehicle’s two occupants, and injured a third?
Well, in the minutes before the incident, the IDF located a drone that was operating in the area. The drone was identified as a hostile aircraft, which had already been operated in the past by Hamas for the purpose of tracking the movements of IDF soldiers.
In this incident, the IDF was also able to identify the control device of that drone, which was in the exact same vehicle Hamza was in. And who was operating this drone? Mustafa Turia, a familiar figure to the IDF. Although a videographer, he was also a scout in the service of Hamas.
David Collier, an investigative journalist, researched on social media 100 of the “journalists” in Gaza. “Almost all of them are tied up with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Almost all of them celebrate the murder of Jews,” he said.3
Ahmed Shahab is a good example. He was killed at his father’s home and is listed as a journalist. Had anyone accessed his social media, they would know that his father was a key Palestinian Islamic Jihad figure.
“If that house was targeted, it had nothing to do with journalism,” said Collier.
Another constraint the media has been dishonest about is their access to Gaza, or rather, their complete lack of it. The only way a journalist can be in Gaza is by being embedded with the Israel Defense Forces, or by being with Hamas terrorists. The latter is possible only if you are a terrorist or Hamas sympathizer.
Unable to put their own reporters and camera people on the ground, international media rely on stringers and freelancers in Gaza for information, photographs, and videos.
Editors and producers are not honest about this enormous limitation, or its implications. Their stringers and photojournalists are Hamas sympathizers or Hamas members. Even if they were not, they could not report freely from Gaza under Hamas rule.
This is also true about coverage from Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank). The dictatorial Palestinian Authority allows no criticism, something of which many Palestinian journalists investigating corruption have fallen afoul.
The media knows that admitting they have no one on the ground in Gaza and are getting only Hamas-approved information would expose them as purveyors of Hamas propaganda, lies, and fiction.
Reporters, likewise, do not want to disrupt the illusion — sometimes even a self-delusion — that they are brave frontline foreign correspondents. There is no kudos to sitting in a hotel bar taking copy from a Hamas hostage-taker who moonlights as a stringer.
For example, a recent video showed Reuters and Associated Press journalist Ashraf Amra laughing at footage of an IDF soldier being lynched. Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa, a freelancer who has been working for Reuters, was photographed with Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza and mastermind of the terror group’s October 7th massacre, kissing Mostafa on the cheek.
To add insult to injury, Mostafa’s photos, one of which seems to show the lynching he had shared on Amra’s Instagram Live, were recently selected by Reuters and The New York Times to be included in their 2023 “Images of the Year.”
And when a resident of Gaza was recently interviewed live on Al Jazeera and complained: “Why are Hamas members hiding in the Deir al-Balah hospital? Let them go hide in hell.” — he was interrupted and the microphone was taken from him. This is not how a media outlet works, or at least is supposed to. But it is how a propaganda machine operates.
News media standards have been in decline for years. Journalistic norms have given way to activist narratives. When reporters and outlets have a clear bias, such as their widespread and entrenched anti-Israel bias, they report what serves their narrative rather than what is true.
Most frustrating is that this, in itself, is easily fixable. It just requires a return to long-established journalist norms and best practice. Standing in the way is a corrupt post-modernist culture — which has also wrecked academia, comedy, and literature — that allows this nonsense to pass as news, facts, and truth.
Fixing that is a far harder problem.
“The New York Times Shows Why The Truth Is Worth It.” Droga5.
Article 28, Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949
David Collier on X
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it's so unbearable to live surrounded by big lies about Israel. I don't have the energy left to tell people that they know NOTHING about the facts.
The mainstream media in Gaza prints zero without the permission of Hamas