A peer-reviewed academic study by Tatiana Glezer, “Selective Sources, Scrutiny, and the Absence of Standards in Military Conflict Coverage,” was published in Digital Hate Review on Sept. 15, 2026
The study demonstrated that leading media outlets, including The Guardian and BBC, rarely mention combatants when reporting Gaza casualty figures, while omitting data from Israeli sources that estimate terrorist deaths.
The other outlets studied were the New York Times, CNN, ABC (Australia), Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. These outlets’ reporting patterns, the study noted, resemble those of the Gaza Ministry of Health (Gaza MoH), which publishes casualty figures without distinguishing between combatants and civilians.
The main conclusion is that “the Gaza MoH became the primary media source of statistical information about Gaza casualties,” and that “journalists used its figures in 100% of all publications, whereas Israeli data appeared in only 3% of the articles.”
Concerning The Guardian, the paper reviewed 245 articles from Feb. to June, 2024, while 145 BBC articles were examined during this time period.
In the first graph, researchers examined the combatant mentions in the articles studied: cases where outlets cited official Israeli information on the number of Hamas terrorists killed. As you can see, Israeli data on terrorists killed was almost never mentioned by either the BBC or the Guardian.
Second, the study analyzed whether outlets explicitly stated that Gaza MoH figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. This methodological disclaimer is crucial. Without it, readers could reasonably assume that published numbers refer entirely to civilian victims.
The study found that AP and The Washington Post highlighted this limitation much more frequently than other outlets (around 40% and 43% of relevant articles). By contrast, the BBC and Reuters almost completely ignored this aspect, mentioning it in only about 1–2% of cases. The New York Times included this important disclaimer in only 9% of its publications, CNN in 4%, and The Guardian in 8%.
Third, the researchers measured the presentation of Gaza MoH data without attribution.
This captures instances where casualty figures are reported as self-evident facts without naming the source. Here, The Guardian showed the highest value: in roughly 43% of its articles, Gaza MoH figures were presented without attribution. For The New York Times and AP, the indicator stood at around 20%. The BBC displayed the lowest level, reporting unattributed figures in only about 2% of articles.
Fourth, the study assessed how systematically outlets indicated Gaza MoH’s institutional affiliation with Hamas. This is an indicator of transparency and correct attribution. To their credit, the BBC almost always stressed this affiliation in articles that mentioned Gaza MoH data (about 95% of relevant materials), while the Guardian rarely did so.
Fifth, a comparative analysis of doubts in Israeli versus Gaza MoH data produced an important result. “Most outlets showed minimal levels of expressed distrust toward Gaza MoH figures while demonstrating disproportionately high distrust toward Israeli statistics.”
For example, BBC journalists did not question Gaza MoH data in any article, while expressing doubts about Israeli figures in 43% of relevant articles. The Guardian expressed doubts about Gaza MoH data in 1% of articles and questioned Israeli statistics in roughly one-third of cases (33%).
Glezer concluded by observing – per the data presented -that “reliance on a single source, limited use of disclaimers, and asymmetrical attribution of scrutiny may produce a distorted representation of the conflict, which, through the authority of major media institutions, can become established as widely accepted public knowledge”.
In the context of the Gaza conflict, Glezer added, “such asymmetrical narratives may contribute to the perception of the war as a conflict primarily directed against civilians, women, and children, rather than as a war involving military confrontation with Hamas”.
Indeed, as we’ve noted often in our posts about British media coverage of Oct. 7 and its aftermath, Hamas – the terror group whose barbaric massacre started the war, and whose fanatical decision to keep on fighting despite the toll the war continues to exact on its civilian population – has been rendered all but invisible.
Such a grossly flawed and dishonest narrative by outlets like the BBC and The Guardian, framing Palestinians and their leadership as victimised and Israel as criminal or genocidal, has, we’ve continually argued, helped fuel the epidemic of antisemitism in the UK, US and elsewhere in the West.
Read the article in full, here.