Anatomy of a failure: How the media became Hamas's echo in the Gaza War

Now that the war is coming to an end, it is time to take stock not only of the military conflict, but also of how we tell the story. And there is something uncomfortable: during this conflict, too many media outlets reported the war, uncritically quoting Hamas sources and becoming complicit in the actions of the bloodthirsty terrorist group. Media monitoring organizations such as CAMERA have repeatedly pointed out how the press has accepted, without due skepticism, the claims of the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, laying the groundwork for a distorted narrative.

Let's start with the basics: the death toll. A study by the international research team, detailed by The Media Line, analyzed nearly 1,400 articles from major media outlets (CNN, BBC, NYT, Reuters) and found something revealing: 98% cited Gaza Health Ministry figures as the primary casualty metric. In contrast, only 3% of the articles cited Israel as the source of the casualty figures. And less than 2% of articles (one in fifty publications, according to the analysis of the think tank Henry Jackson Society on the study) mentioned that the figures provided by Hamas could not be independently verified or were controversial.

Here's the first problem: Gaza's Ministry of Health has been under direct Hamas control since 2007, when the group took power in the Strip. This is not an accusation, it is a fact: Hamas established and manages this government institution. The ministry itself admitted to having incomplete data for more than 11,000 of the 33,000 deaths it claimed to have documented. Independent statistical analyses found mathematically impossible correlations in the daily death data, suggesting that the numbers could be systematically fabricated or manipulated.

However, only a tiny percentage of the articles analyzed clarified these fundamental conflicts: that the numbers come from an entity controlled by one side of the conflict, that they cannot be independently verified, and that they do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The rest presented them as facts. The traditional media, instead of questioning, simply transcribed.

Case study 1: the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital, the lie that went around the world

Perhaps the most immediate example of this failure occurred in the first weeks of the war. A few days after the October 7 pogrom, the war had barely begun when an explosion rocked the parking lot of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. Within minutes, and without a shred of verifiable evidence, the Hamas Health Ministry announced a massacre of historic proportions: an "Israeli airstrike" had killed more than 500 civilians in what would become one of the deadliest bombings of the conflict.

The media reaction was instantaneous and shameful. Headlines around the world, from The New York Times to the BBC to Reuters and Associated Press, were quick to publish the allegation as verified fact. There was no skepticism, no waiting to check, the basic journalistic precaution. The narrative was too emotional to be questioned. Media outlets that amplified the story without verification included especially Al Jazeera, the government-funded network of Qatar, the same country that harbored Hamas leaders.

Days later, different intelligence analyses from multiple countries (the United States, United Kingdom, France, among others) and detailed geospatial evidence disproved the fake news launched by news agencies and replicated worldwide. The consensus was resounding: the explosion was not caused by an Israeli bomb, but by a failed rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad from inside Gaza. The evidence was multiple: the crater was small (characteristic of a rocket, not an aerial bomb), the structural damage to the hospital was minimal (the windows remained intact), and the figure of 500 dead was a grotesque fabrication without any substantiation. Subsequent analysis estimated the actual casualties at dozens and all the responsibility of Palestinian terrorism.

But the correction, whispered on inside pages and in brief online updates, never had the force of the original headline's scream. The lie had already circled the globe, generating massive anti-Israel demonstrations in Western capitals and incalculable diplomatic conflict. The damage to public perception was irreversibly done, and the media had been primarily responsible for spreading the lie.

Case study 2: San Porfirio, from false rumor to global condemnation

The case of the St. Porphyry Orthodox Church in Gaza was another clear example, aimed at generating accumulation of claims so that a denial would not make a dent in the general perception. A few days after the start of the war, claims circulated massively on social networks that Israel had just blown up the third oldest church in the world. Sensationalist headlines multiplied: verified accounts on X reported that Israel had bombed the church with four missiles, killing more than 50 civilian refugees. The church itself had to categorically deny it on its official Facebook account: "The Church of St. Porphyry in Gaza is intact and functioning at the service of the community. The news circulating about damage is false. This is nothing but rumors, lies and fake news." No international media verified the fact before the story went viral globally.

Case study 3: Holy Family, the Pope and political instrumentalization

The case of Father Gabriel Romanelli and the Holy Family church has a particularly Manichean dimension that was intensely instrumentalized. In July 2025, part of an Israeli shell hit a building in the Holy Family compound. Its parish priest, Father Romanelli was slightly wounded in one leg, as evidenced by images of his bandages. The reaction was immediate and global: the pope expressed being deeply saddened by the military attack and even President Donald Trump personally called Benjamin Netanyahu to express his frustration over the church attack. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni harshly condemned Israel and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared that attacks on places of worship were unacceptable.

International headlines amplified this narrative: "Israel bombs Gaza's only Catholic Church," without qualifying that this was not an aerial bombardment but parts of shells used in a combat zone and that the damage to the building did not remotely correspond to what was being reported. Days later, Israel completed its investigation and concluded that the attack was the product of "an unintentional detour of munitions" during military operations in the area. The Israeli military acknowledged the fact, a product of fighting in urban areas given that this is where the terrorists were hiding (as is being well documented by recently returned hostages) and expressed regret, but by then the "deliberate attack" narrative had already made its way around the world.

The pattern repeats itself: explosive initial accusation, global media amplification, high-impact political and religious backlash, and finally a technical correction that no one remembers. The difference between "Israel deliberately targeted a church full of refugees" and "a shell missed its target and accidentally hit part of the compound where the church was" is huge, but the first version is the one that remains etched in the collective memory.

Case Study 4: the famine narrative, manipulation reduced to slogans

For months, headlines warned of a deliberate and imminent "famine" in Gaza. The images were heartbreaking, the testimonies distressing. But again, these reports cited as their primary source agencies of the UN (whose vile action deserves worldwide condemnation) that, in turn, obtained their data from Hamas-controlled local authorities. In addition, a large number of UN members were found to be providing support when they were not directly members of the terrorist organization.

The situation on the ground was far more complex than the viciously manipulated narrative suggested, and the way the media presented this complexity revealed fundamental journalistic flaws that deserve to be documented.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid entered Gaza during the conflict. This is verifiable through multiple independent sources and reports from international humanitarian agencies. However, numerous videos and testimonies showed Hamas operatives systematically stealing aid trucks, stockpiling food for their fighters, and selling supplies on black markets at exorbitant prices. At the same time, verified images showed markets in Gaza with food available, albeit at prices prohibitive to many Palestinians. This reality, which included both a genuine humanitarian crisis and a deliberate diversion of aid, was consistently ignored by the media with a simple slogan: "Israel is provoking a genocidal famine."

The most outrageous case of this manipulative oversimplification occurred when The New York Times published on its front page a heartbreaking image: a Gazan boy named Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, skeletal, being held by his mother. The story, which circulated globally, further claimed that the boy's father had been killed when he went out for food, underscoring the famine narrative. The image was immediately replicated by BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Sky News, Daily Mail, and The Times of London, becoming the global symbol of the alleged genocide by starvation that Israel has been accused of perpetrating.

There was a fundamental problem with this story that any diligent journalist should have spotted immediately: the wider images, which existed but were systematically cropped or ignored by the media, featured Mohammed's older brother, three-year-old Joud. The child was seen without any sign of malnutrition. Mohammed's mother also showed no signs of starvation. This visual truism, which contradicted the narrative of widespread starvation, was completely hidden.

The truth began to emerge when Mohammed's medical records were released, revealing that Mohammed suffered from muscular dystrophy, a genetic condition that in his case caused lack of coordination and made him especially vulnerable to malnutrition. His treating physician confirmed that Mohammed had been under treatment for malnutrition, but that his condition was primarily the result of his congenital disease, not generalized starvation. The curvature of his spine, visible in the photos, was another clear indicator of his neurological condition.

Even more telling: the BBC had interviewed Mohammed's mother, and in that interview she herself made allusions to her son's "prolonged struggle," mentioning physiotherapy sessions that had helped him to stand up. However, the BBC narrator never mentioned these obvious clues, leaving the audience to believe that the devastating physical condition they were seeing was Israel's fault alone.

Even the narrative about the father's death turned out to be more complex than presented. Zakaria Ayoub Al-Matouq did not die "searching for food" as the media claimed, but in Jabalia, in what appears to have been combat. Between October 25 and 29, Israel lost six soldiers in clashes in the area. Mohammed's father did not die looking for food for his family, as the media had dramatized.

After days of pressure and criticism, The New York Times finally published an editorial note on Tuesday, July 29, admitting that after the article was published, the media outlet learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had pre-existing health problems. But this correction was buried at the end of the online article and posted on the Times's X PR account, which has fewer than 90,000 followers, not on its main account, which has more than 55 million. By then, the image and the story had already circled the globe, had been cited by world leaders, and had solidified in the global consciousness the narrative that Israel was deliberately starving Palestinian children to death.

The difference between "there are severe food shortages and Hamas is systematically diverting humanitarian aid" and "Israel is causing a genocidal famine" is enormous, both morally and politically. The media consistently chose the second option. Bias played a key role. The colonialist-oppressor narrative against the colonized people is emotionally powerful and fits into pre-existing ideological frameworks. Questioning casualty figures or investigating a child's pre-existing health feels morally uncomfortable, as if one is minimizing suffering. It is easier, and emotionally more satisfying, to accept the simple narrative of the villain everyone points the finger at.

The end of trust

The result of all this is that millions of people have an understanding of the conflict grounded in jihadist propaganda. A significant part of global journalism not only reported on the conflict, but became allies of belligerent terrorism.

The failure was not random, but systemic, grounded in lazy or active acceptance of narratives designed to manipulate global public opinion. How many articles clearly explained that the Gaza Ministry of Health has been a Hamas-operated institution since 2007? How many mentioned that Al Jazeera, one of the main amplifiers of these narratives, is funded by Qatar? How many media outlets warned their readers that the death tolls did not distinguish between combatants and civilians?

As the monitoring organization Honest Reporting warned, this was the "original sin" of the coverage. By accepting the Hamas numbers as fact, the media validated that every Hamas or Islamic Jihad fighter killed in combat was a civilian "casualty," artificially inflating the perception of an indiscriminate campaign against the population.

The coverage of the Gaza war will go down in history as the malpractice that ended up condemning the traditional media. This did not happen because of a lack of resources, but because of a combination of ideological bias, intellectual laziness and the drive for a shocking headline over the search for the truth. At the end of the war, the public is no better informed. Credibility is journalism's only real capital. During these two years, it has been squandered relentlessly.