Media outlets, including CNN, cannot simply treat UN and ICC figures as neutral, unbiased sources whose claims can be left uncontextualized or unchallenged. In times of war, journalists must be extra careful, too. To do otherwise is to risk playing a part in Hamas’ cynical use of human shields and civilian deaths.
After the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust, whose voices did CNN’s Alaa Elassar choose to elevate? The fringe Jews dedicated to delegitimizing the Jewish state and justifying the acts of terrorism committed against it.
CNN can’t help itself. Last week, the network was caught uncritically spreading Hamas’s propaganda that Israel struck Al-Ahli hospital on October 17th. A week later, CNN is back at it, once again spreading Hamas claims, but this time deceiving its audience into thinking the terrorist organization's casualty figures came from a legitimate, independent source.
Spreading Hamas propaganda without qualification or context is no different than uncritically airing Islamic State propaganda. Journalists must clearly articulate to their audiences that when they use Hamas casualty figures, they are relying on an internationally designated terrorist organization. The public should know those important factors that weigh on the credibility of such significant claims.
Contrary to CNN's depiction, it wasn’t that this was a “he said she said” issue, and the network just failed by not waiting for the “she said.” The issue was that they took Hamas’s claims at face value, and then they gave the terrorist organization’s claims equal weight to that of Israel’s, notwithstanding the IDF’s claims were backed up by audio and visual evidence.
When a Human Rights Watch activist was given two chances on MSNBC to talk about the situation in Israel, she used the word “terrorism” only once. No, not in reference to the mass murder, rape, mutilation, torture, and burning alive of 1,400 Israeli men, women, and children at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. Rather, she used it to describe the Israeli Defense Force’s urging of Gazans to evacuate northern Gaza where the IDF intends to strike hard against those Palestinian terrorists.
The number of erroneous and seriously misleading claims contained in just this article raises serious concerns about USA Today’s commitment to accuracy. That the errors all seem to downplay Palestinian terrorism or distort the Israeli and Jewish history similarly raises concern about USA Todays’ commitment to fairness in reporting.
If Harper’s cannot get these basic, well-known facts about the Gaza Strip right, how can readers trust anything else the magazine says about the conflict?
In the span of two sentences, CNBC grossly misrepresented Hamas’s goals and, in what reads as an attempted justification for Hamas, got both the law and the facts wrong.
At MSNBC, even when Jews are being cruelly slaughtered by the hundreds, they cannot be centered as the victims; after all, they probably had it coming.
