The BBC uncritically amplified an IPC report declaring famine in Gaza City, despite its reliance on an unpublished phone survey, outdated figures, and questionable NGO sources. Israeli rebuttals highlighting these flaws were sidelined, while the BBC promoted voices with a long record of accusing Israel of “engineered starvation.”
Under the guise of "contextualized truth," The Los Angeles Times falsely casts children suffering from serious medical conditions as famine victims. By depriving themselves of the essential ingredients which nourish healthy journalism — seek truth and report it, minimize harm and act independently — LA Times writers have devolved into ghoulish shadows of functioning journalists.
Norman Finkelstein said that the October 7 attack "warmed every fiber of his soul" and that Gaza was a "concentration camp" before that day. But the problem with the "open-air prison" narrative is that it's just not true.
AFP captions accompanying a dozen portraits of Mariam Dawwas report without challenge the mother's claim that the 9-year-old "had no known illness." Independent journalist David Collier outperforms the "leading global news agency," revealing the malnourished girl suffers from intestinal malabsorption.
For nearly two years, Haaretz has amplified the false claim that Israel is “starving” Gaza, relying on a long-time anti-Israel activist and misleading images of sick children whose conditions had nothing to do with hunger. UN data and multiple expert reviews have repeatedly shown no famine exists. Yet the campaign continues.
If information backed up by publicly shared Hamas documents is "unsubstantiated," as The Los Angeles Times suggests, what could possibly constitute substantiation regarding "journalists" moonlighting as terrorists?
Most British media ignored IDF evidence that Anas Al-Sharif, a Hamas commander operating under the guise of an Al Jazeera reporter, was the head of a terrorist cell responsible for rocket attacks. Instead, outlets largely described him as a “journalist,” omitting the long-documented overlap between Hamas operatives and Gaza-based reporters.
An ITV News video report on Gaza by international editor Emma Murphy erased Hamas from the story, framing the destruction solely as “the war that Israel is waging here.” Viewers were not told about Hamas’s use of civilian buildings for military purposes, its booby-trapping of structures, or the Oct. 7 massacre that started the war.
There are no good answers to the predicament Israel faces. The government’s decision is ripe for criticism, but so too would be any other decision. Responsible journalists must not ignore the morally and factually challenging circumstances Israel faces by glossing over competing considerations at play.
Reuters corrects after citing B'Tselem's grossly inflated figure for Israeli domestic water usage. But its article still ignores Israeli data indicating that double the amount of water recommended for daily use in emergency situations is available in the Gaza Strip.
