The Media’s Coverage of the Gaza War Is Completely Backward

By Becket Adams

Sunday, June 16, 2024

 

The Western press’s coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas has it all backward.

 

Hamas is treated as a credible source — even a partner. It’s trusted to provide accurate information and to adhere to international norms regarding humanitarian treatment and the rules of engagement.

 

Israel, on the other hand, is treated as a bad-faith actor. Its every statement is doubted. Some journalists appear to operate from a position best summed up as: When in doubt, assume Israel has committed a crime against humanity .

 

In other words, the press treats the sovereign nation as a terrorist cell and the terrorist cell as a sovereign nation. Nowhere is this clearer than when the two sides issue conflicting statements about the same event or casualty numbers, which is often. Hamas gets the benefit of the doubt, while Israel gets condemnation.

 

It’s an upside-down world.

 

CNN published an article on June 10 that challenged Israel’s account of the military operation in which IDF security forces rescued four hostages held in two apartments in Gaza while under intense gunfire from Hamas terrorists. CNN claimed that Israel had failed to “provide evidence” that its team came under fire during the operation.

 

Israel Defense Forces Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari “said that the IDF had come under intense fire,” CNN reported, “especially after withdrawing from the apartments, but did not provide evidence for his claims.”

 

Well, this is awkward. Two sentences later, the same report notes that a CNN analyst witnessed and confirmed a “robust firefight” immediately after the hostages were secured.

 

The IDF has not provided evidence of this thing our analyst saw and confirmed.

 

Later that day, CNN published a separate report reviewing IDF helmet-camera footage, which showed that the rescue team had indeed come under heavy fire during the mission.

 

But even if CNN’s analyst hadn’t confirmed the firefight and there wasn’t headcam footage, what’s the alternative scenario? That IDF forces simply walked into Hamas-occupied territory in broad daylight, scooped up four hostages, and exited without resistance? Which scenario sounds more likely?

 

Meanwhile, in the same CNN report that needlessly cast doubt on the IDF’s claim that its team came under fire, the cable network reported that “at least 274 Palestinians were killed in the operation and hundreds injured.” The story said later that “Gazan authorities say 274 Palestinians were killed and 698 injured — which would mark one of the deadliest days in months for people living in Gaza.” As always, the source of these figures is Hamas or, as CNN likes to put it, “Gazan authorities.” There are no passive-aggressive asides or clarifiers to challenge these figures, which always manage to materialize suspiciously instantaneously following some major IDF success. Nothing in the CNN report indicates Gaza’s death toll numbers are chronically suspect, a fact that even the badly broken Associated Press admitted for a brief moment before reverting back to parroting Hamas-supplied numbers. There’s no healthy skepticism, even after the Western press has been fooled already by obviously bogus data coming out of Gaza. The statistics “reported” by “Gazan authorities” are presented as fact, and we, the readers, are expected to accept them.

 

In an even more glaring example of the press’s uneven application of scrutiny, consider this CNN headline from February: “More than 30,000 killed in Gaza since Israel-Hamas war began, health ministry says.”

 

Again, we’re asked to accept the figures provided by the Hamas-controlled health ministry, and to ignore the fact that Hamas’s numbers don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. The same Hamas whose leadership said recently that more dead Palestinians is good for the cause because it will increase international pressure on Israel. We have every reason to doubt these death tolls, but so few do.

 

In contrast, observe this June 10 CNN headline: “Israel alleges journalist held hostages in Gaza, without providing evidence.”

 

There’s also the issue of the press choosing to highlight Gaza’s death estimates over Israel’s. We have reason, as in any war, to be skeptical of both parties. Yet, for some reason, Israel’s figures are always subordinated to Hamas’s, mentioned only as an aside (if even that).

 

“How an Israeli raid freed 4 hostages and killed at least 274 Palestinians in Gaza,” reads an Associated Press headline.

 

Said the Los Angeles Times, “274 Palestinians killed in Israeli rescue of 4 hostages, say Gaza health officials.”

 

“Gaza health ministry says Israeli hostage rescue killed 274 Palestinians,” reported the BBC.

 

Israel, for its part, reported that fewer than 100 people — the proportion of combatants and civilians unknown — died in the hostage-rescue operation last weekend. But this figure doesn’t get the headline treatment, if it gets reported at all (neither the AP nor the L.A. Times mentioned Israel’s figure in their respective coverage).

 

The bias is obvious, though casual consumers of the news, reading the same sorts of reports over and over, may not pick up on it. Hamas’s numbers are trustworthy, Israel’s barely worthy of mention.

 

It’s okay for journalists to be skeptical of Israel’s version of events. A journalist has to double-check everything, after all. Also, countries tend to lie in wartime. A lot. But why does the scrutiny only ever go one way? Why would we uncritically accept figures from Hamas, all while demanding triple and quadruple confirmation of Israel’s?

 

Journalists know Hamas is a terrorist cell, correct?

 

The coverage really is all backward. You could say that it makes no sense, this disparity in how the press treats Hamas versus Israel. But this is the world we live in, one in which a democratic, free country’s numbers are treated with more skepticism than those of the blood-soaked terrorist group.

 

You might even say that the disparity in coverage is also the best response to the age-old cliché that Jews control the media. If they do, boy, are they getting a rotten return on investment.