Hamas’s casualty figures for the fighting in Gaza have been a source of much debate. While numerous expert analyses have raised serious questions regarding the veracity of Hamas’s data, media outlets like CNN have generally treated Hamas’s figures as reliable. But in a notable exception, when it comes to fatalities reportedly caused by starvation, CNN effectively treats Hamas’s figures as dramatically inaccurate.
Media consumers should ask: why?
Take the September 15 article, “More than 10% of Gaza’s population has been killed or injured, former Israeli military chief says,” by Tal Shalev and Eugenia Yosef. The article jumps on a statement by the former head of the Israel Defense Forces that over 200,000 Gazans have been killed or wounded during the war. This is notable, the audience is told, because it supposedly lends credibility to Hamas’s figures, which suggest 229,000 total killed and wounded (65,000 dead, 164,000 wounded).
But the article completely misses why Hamas’s figures are so controversial. The criticisms have less to do with the totals and more to do with the specifics. In particular, many have raised serious questions regarding how many were military-age males and how many women and children (see, e.g., The Washington Institute, the Henry Jackson Society, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), The Atlantic, and even the Associated Press). In some cases, this has forced even institutions like the United Nations, which relies on Hamas data, to backtrack on claims.
But there is one way in which CNN also treats Hamas data as wildly inaccurate.
How so?
It has to do with CNN’s uncritical coverage of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) network’s claim that there is “famine” in parts of the Gaza Strip, mainly Gaza City.
As with the general casualty figures, numerous experts have pointed out serious methodological flaws in the IPC’s report. One of the flaws has to do casualty figures. In order to declare a famine, the data must show that a mortality rate threshold has been met. As explained by Dr. Mark Zlochin, “For Gaza City, the famine line would have meant about 180 excess deaths every single day from hunger or related disease. The actual reported figure was about six deaths per day across the entire Strip – nowhere near the threshold.”
So on what basis could the IPC possibly have declared a famine? As recently pointed out by FDD’s David Adesnik and Aaron Goren, the IPC simply assumed that the Hamas’s Health Ministry’s data was unreliable. They then “inferred” that the true figure was at least 3,000% higher.
To be clear, the IPC’s report specifically suggests these “inferred” deaths are on top of the existing casualty figures, not that malnutrition deaths are being misclassified. To understand just how unlikely these figures are, on Monday CNN considered it highly newsworthy that around 130 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s “accelerating” strikes since Saturday. During that period, nearly three times as many should have died of malnutrition, according to the IPC’s “inference.”
Nonetheless, CNN breathlessly reported on the IPC claim. “Gaza City suffering a ‘man-made’ famine that’s likely to spread, UN-backed initiative says,” read one headline for an August 23, 2025 article authored by CNN’s Yosef, as well as Nadeen Ebrahim, Oren Liebermann, and Kareem Khadder.
It appears neither Yosef nor any other CNN reporter or editor has wrestled with the contradictions in their own reporting. Are Hamas’s figures reliable, as Yosef’s reporting implied on September 15, or are Hamas’s figures near worthless, as Yosef’s reporting also implied just a few weeks earlier?
What consistency can be found is a slant toward accepting the worst narrative against Israel. At one point, Yosef and Shalev appear to try deliberately to confuse readers, writing:
During the war, Israeli officials repeatedly challenged the health ministry figures, seeking to cast doubt on the reported death and injury tolls in the besieged enclave. They also accused the ministry of relying on data supplied by Hamas.
Presumably understanding that media consumers aren’t inclined to believe the claims of a terrorist organization like ISIS or Hamas, the reporters rhetorically disembody an institution of Hamas from Hamas to give it undeserved credibility. Given that “the ministry” is a part of Hamas’s “government,” the sentence might as well have read: “Israel also accused Hamas of relying on data supplied by Hamas.”
What is certain is that CNN is not producing quality journalism on this subject. In a field that is supposed to embrace relentless curiosity, obvious questions are being left unasked.