The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
As the horrific dimensions of Hamas’ gruesome attack on Israeli civilians this weekend become clearer, it seems like news agencies’ reports on the shocking event are becoming blurrier.
Three disturbing patterns emerge from recent pieces by Reuters and the Associated Press: Victims and perpetrators are lumped together, terrorists’ atrocities are minimized, and full paragraphs are devoted to rationalizing the barbaric acts.
The first pattern — which shamelessly shows symmetry and moral equivalence between the two sides — is usually the result of subtly playing with numbers and words.
The following Reuters headline, for example, creates the impression of a parallel military clash, and blurs the fact that Hamas was responsible for slaughtering half of the victims:
The first bullet point in the article reads: “About 500 Israelis and Palestinians dead.”
It is not until the sixth paragraph that a clear explanation is given as to what happened, albeit also in a symmetrical structure that makes it look like Israel targets civilians:
Hamas fighters killed at least 250 Israelis in clashes throughout Saturday and into Sunday, and escaped back into Gaza with dozens of hostages. More than 250 Gazans were killed when Israel responded with one of its most devastating days of retaliatory strikes.
The AP’s report goes further with its moral equivalence:
Civilians paid a staggering cost on both sides. More than 300 people have been killed in Gaza, while residents fled homes near the border to escape Israeli strikes, heading deeper inside the territory after warnings from the Israeli military. In Israel, TV news aired a stream of accounts from the relatives of captive or missing Israelis, who wailed and begged for assistance amid uncertainty about the fate of their loved ones.
It may be subtle, but when a major news agency says “civilians paid a staggering cost on both sides,” the absurdity of putting Hamas and Israel on the same moral level is consumed by millions.
Terrorists Are Not “Fighters”
Calling Hamas terrorists “fighters” is another terminological tactic, serving the second pattern of reporting: minimizing Hamas’ atrocities or even lending them legitimacy. This word absolves Hamas terrorists of their crimes — massacring men, women, and children — and adopts their own self-glorification for doing so.
Not to mention one can almost hear the silent “freedom fighters” description this word brings to mind.
Would any respectable journalist dare call the 9/11 terrorists “fighters” without being immediately fired for showing support for their Jihad?
Yet this is AP’s headline about “fighting” done by Hamas:
This pattern of minimizing the perpetrators’ obscene acts is also achieved by the sin of omission.
This following Reuters page initially presented a video piece showing only Israeli strikes on Gaza, without including any of the horrific clips of Hamas atrocities posted on social media since yesterday. Those were only added much later on Sunday.
An earlier version of the page included only footage of Hamas gunmen walking through the border fence and around an Israeli military base. Rest assured that when it comes to Palestinian victims, Reuters doesn’t delay and usually has no qualms about showing almost every visual detail.
Failed Explanations
The third category of biased reporting can look like an attempt to give necessary background. But instead of just reminding their audience that Hamas has always been sworn to Israel’s destruction, wire services covering the war have reached impressive levels of denial, at best, or blaming Israel, at worst.
In a section titled “What Prompted the Attack?” in a recent explainer piece, AP’s Isabel Debre parrots Hamas’ excuses about Jews visiting “the sensitive Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound.”
Unfortunately, she fails to add the necessary background mentioning it’s the holiest site for Jews, who are allowed to visit it.
She goes on to mention the expansion of Jewish settlements, recent violent protests defying the “blockade” along the Gaza border, and Hamas’ objection to current US-brokered talks on normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Some may argue on the relevance of these reasons, of course, but what they all have in common is that they don’t hold Hamas accountable for anything.
On the contrary, they blame the Jewish state for events leading to the recent catastrophe.
Debre could have simply read Hamas’ charter which declares “we will raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” in order to realize it has always tried to slaughter Jews, and never needed any other excuse for doing so.
Reuters’ background material, in the final paragraphs of this story, isn’t any better. It writes, “We warned you,” quoting Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (and even puts his quote in a subheader), as if it was Israel’s responsibility to heed that call.
Wire services represent reality to millions of people worldwide. Are the distortions intentional or the product of a worrying inability to handle the dark facts?
Either way, when they create a false symmetry between perpetrators and victims, minimize their terrorist acts, or try to justify them in twisted ways, they manipulate their audience by violating journalistic as well as human ethics.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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