A three minute ITV News video report (“Aerial footage filmed by ITV News shows the scale of Gaza’s destruction”, Aug. 4), by their international editor Emma Murphy, is a perfect illustration of the British media’s continued slouch towards advocacy journalism when covering Hamas’s Oct. 7th war. The modifier “advocacy” before “journalism” erases the traditional meaning of the latter word, at least within the democratic West.
As you’ll see if you watch the video, filmed by ITV News on-board a Jordanian plane dropping aid into Gaza, during the entire segment, in which ruins in the territory are shown, viewers are only told that what they are seeing is the aftermath of “the war that Israel is waging here,” while never mentioning, or even alluding to, Hamas.
The word “Hamas”, to be clear, isn’t mentioned once in the entire report.