The 2023 Israel–Hamas war has been extensively covered by media outlets around the world. This coverage has been diverse, spanning from traditional news outlets to social media platforms, and comprises a wide variety of perspectives and narratives.

During the conflict, Israel imposed strict controls on international journalists, requiring military escorts and pre-broadcast reviews of their footage. In January 2024, the Supreme Court of Israel upheld these requirements on security grounds. Prominent U.S. media organizations like NBC and CNN confirmed that Israel had the authority to approve content from Gaza, with journalists embedded with the Israeli military required to submit materials for review.

Social media has played a significant role in sharing information, with platforms like TikTok seeing billions of views on related content. Research showed a vast disparity in the number of pro-Palestinian versus pro-Israeli posts. The conflict has led to the spread of misleading information and propaganda. Hamas has been banned from most social media platforms, although content from the group still circulates on sites like Telegram. In Gaza, local content creators documented their experiences, gaining significant followings.

In Israel, social media has been used to garner support for military actions, with the government running ads portraying Hamas negatively. Some Israeli influencers and content creators have mocked and dehumanized Palestinians, leading to widespread criticism. Videos posted by Israeli soldiers showing abuse and destruction in Gaza have gone viral, prompting international condemnation and internal investigations by the Israel Defence Forces.

The war has had a severe impact on Gaza's infrastructure and economy, with extensive damage to homes, hospitals, schools, and essential services. The conflict has caused significant job losses and economic decline in both Gaza and the West Bank. International scrutiny and media coverage have highlighted the human toll and the challenges faced by journalists operating in the region.

Background

Israel requires all international journalists covering the war from Gaza to be accompanied by Israeli military escorts and to allow the military to review their footage before broadcast. On 9 January, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled there was no requirement to loosen its requirements on journalists' entry, citing security grounds.

It has been verified by prominent US media organizations like NBC and CNN that Israeli forces hold the authority to authorize the release of any content or footage from Gaza. As a condition for gaining entry into Gaza with Israeli protection, CNN and NBC have consented to Israel's military overseeing and limiting the activities of their journalists in the region. This development follows a period of media blackout and the loss of 34 Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Journalist Fareed Zakaria highlighted that journalists embedded with the Israeli military are obligated to comply with specific terms, which include submitting all materials and footage for review by the Israeli military prior to publication.

Coverage by type

Social media

Social media has played a major part in sharing information about the conflict, especially platforms like TikTok where war-related videos have garnered billions of views. As of 10 October 2023, the hashtag #Palestine has some 27.8 billion views, and the hashtag #Israel has 23 billion on TikTok. Similar statistics were seen in later analysis with research done by the company Humanz, a tech company founded by former IDF intelligence officers. Humanz showed that during October 2023 there were 7.39 billion posts with pro-Israeli tags posted to Instagram and TikTok, while there were 109.61 billion posts with pro-Palestinian tags published on the sites in the same time. The documentation and spreading of information of the conflict is not a new phenomenon with multiple clips showing the continued conflict going viral since the app was first public. However, this has also resulted in the dissemination of misleading information and propaganda.

In mid-October, the Communications and digital minister Fahmi Fadzil confirmed that the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) would meet with TikTok's parent company ByteDance following complaints from Malaysian TikTok users that content containing words like Hamas were removed by the social media company.

Hamas has been barred from most social media sites and are unable to post on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok; however, some content from the group has been posted on other sites such as Telegram, where an account reportedly aligned to Hamas would post photos and videos in support of Hamas or documenting their actions, per the Atlantic Council.

In Gaza, young content creators, such as Hind Khoudary, Plestia Alaqad, Motaz Azaiza, and Bisan Owda, documented their lives through the war, gaining significant followings on social media. In Yemen, teenage influencer Rashid, nicknamed "Timhouthi Chalamet", went viral on TikTok and X after posting a video of himself touring the captured ship Galaxy Leader and was later interviewed by streamer Hasan Piker. An image of a teenage boy holding onto his deceased mother in Gaza went viral on social media in February 2024.

In Israel

Videos of the attacks against Israel and its citizens were reportedly spread through paid partnership with the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, and is a part of the Israeli governments sweeping social media campaign to build support for its military actions. Reportedly in the week following the October attacks by Hamas, Israel's Foreign Affairs Ministry had run about 30 ads that were seen over 4 million times on X, which portrayed Hamas as a "vicious terrorist group" similar to ISIS.

Israeli travel blogger and social influencer Ella Kenan pivoted her content shortly after the 7 October attacks and began to push the hashtage 'HamasIsISIS' through her 200,000 followers. She also created a poster stating 'Greta Thunberg Supports ISIS' after Thunberg posted a picture of herself and friends at a rally for Gaza. The poster spread across multiple different social networks.

In early November 2023, a satirical video created by Israeli actress Noa Tishby was criticized for being Islamophobic and Queer-phobic after it went viral. The video was captioned as showing "...pro-Hamas college students on their journey to normalizing a massacre", adding that "a huge part of our Jewish culture is using humor to deal with trauma." In the video the actors stated that "everyone is welcome, LGBTQH..." with the H to stand for Hamas and held a fake interview with a freedom fighter in Gaza, while wearing outfits that were "oppression chic."

In December 2023 it was reported that a Telegram channel with at the time about 10,500 members was created and run by the IDF's Influencing Department. The channel was originally titled "The Avengers" but was soon changed to Azazel, to sound closer to the Hebrew pronunciation for Gaza and another word for hell and had posted over 700 photos and videos. Many of the videos showed the destruction of Gaza and mocking it or degrading Palestinians such as images where two Palestinian men were dressed as pigs and captioned claiming they were roaches and products of incest.

Trends

Social media platforms saw trends spreading misinformation and mocking the conflict and dehumanising Palestinians. An Israeli special effects and makeup artist drew ire and contempt from other users after posting a video of her pretending to be a Palestinian mother pleading for help before calling cut. Another part of the video shows her applying bruises with makeup with many calling out the insensitivity it showed. Other videos reportedly created and posted by Israeli citizens showed them mocking different aspects of the suffering of those in Palestine, with some wearing traditional dress and using makeup and talcum powder to appear to be suffering from the bombs, while others flaunt water and electricity while Palestinians have been cut off from those services.

IDF

The official IDF channel for informing international media is the International Media Branch of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, which also runs social media accounts. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht became head of the IMB in 2019, but his predecessor Peter Lerner, who had retired from the IDF, came out of retirement to join the unit again after the Hamas attack. Jonathan Conricus also holds interviews with foreign media.

The IDF has a profile on TikTok, which had 1.7 million followers in 2021. Since the outbreak of the war some IDF soldiers have independently gone viral and amassed large followings on social media. While some were viral videos others created channels to document the daily life of soldiers during the war.

Videos posted by Israeli soldiers mocking, denigrating, and abusing Palestinians went viral, some of the most violent were used by South Africa at its ICJ case. In a video posted by in Gaza in late-January 2024, an Israeli soldier posed smiling as an entire neighborhood was blown up by the IDF. In another, an Israeli soldiers coerced blindfolded Palestinian detainees to pledge themselves as slaves. Widely-circulated video and images at around 7 December 2023, showed dozens of Palestinian men in Northern Gaza blindfolded, stripped partially naked, and kneeling on the ground, guarded by Israeli soldiers. Other videos have shown IDF troops since the start of the conflict, purposefully destroying businesses while laughing, setting goods on fire while still in a vehicle, and going through private Gazan citizens' belongings. These videos and actions were condemned by IDF officials after being questioned on the members actions.

In February 2024, an image went viral showing an IDF soldier standing over an injured Palestinian man stripped naked and strapped to a chair. The U.S. Department of State responded to the viral photo stating it was "deeply troubled". The image was included in a BBC News Verify investigation along with several hundred other videos posted by IDF soldiers who had made no effort to conceal their identities. IDF officials initially stated that they had terminated the service of one soldier engaging in a potential breach of international law and identified by the BBC. However, they have now included the agreement that it will continue to act to identify unusual cases that potentially show misconduct. Other videos in the review include hundreds of detainees, with most stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and kneeling in front of the Israeli flag, while watched by IDF members, and interspersed with soldiers posing with guns.

Some of the videos posted appear to show IDF members pushing for the Israeli resettlement of Gaza, after Israeli settlements had been evacuated in 2005. An IDF Rabbi Capt. Avihai Friedman was recorded telling a group of IDF soldiers that "It’s our country, all of it — Gaza too.....The whole promised land", while other soldiers expressed their support.

Videos and pictures of Israeli soldiers going through Palestinian women's underwear in Gaza went viral, leading MIFTAH, a Palestinian women's advocacy organization, to state they showed "depravity". In March 2024, video clips and photos of female IDF soldiers acting and dancing proactively went viral, with the censored clips shown on Israel's Channel 2. The video showed the female soldiers dancing in their underwear while spanking each other and using their rifles as stripper poles, while the photos were female soldiers posing in their underwear and exposing their butts. The soldiers in the photos were reported disciplined.

Activism

Messaging platforms

Messaging apps such as Telegram have been utilized to share information regarding the conflict. Nonetheless, these platforms have been criticized for inadequate content moderation, enabling the dissemination of violent videos and false information. X (formerly Twitter) was criticized by the European Union for not taking action against fake news spreaders in the website.

Wikipedia

In October 2023, Slate reporter Stephen Harrison praised the English Wikipedia for its coverage of the war, noting that it "retains the seemingly traditional policy of requiring that most its information derive from reliable secondary sources such as newspapers, not primary sources like an individual's social media posts... this old-school rule—requiring vetting and publication from a traditional media outlet—seems to have shielded Wikipedia from some of the latest social media disinformation campaigns." Wikipedia editors debated renaming the 2023 Israel-Hamas war article to "2023 Israel-Gaza war".

The Hebrew Wikipedia has experienced edit wars over content related to the war. The Arabic Wikipedia has expressed solidarity with Palestinians, and briefly shut down in December 2023 for a day "in support of the residents of the Gaza Strip and in protest of the continuing attacks, while calling for an end to the war and the spread of peace."

The World Jewish Congress stated in a March 2024 report that "The state of the articles dealing with the conflict is alarming in its lack of neutrality."

Information from Gaza

Direct attacks on telecommunications infrastructure by Israel, electricity blockades and fuel shortages have caused the near-total collapse of Gaza's largest cell network providers. Lack of internet access has obstructed people in Gaza including journalists from communicating with people outside Gaza. The Egyptian journalist and writer Mirna El Helbawi discovered that eSIMs (a programmable SIM card built into a smartphone) could be used by people in Gaza to connect to remote telecommunication networks whilst roaming (primarily Egyptian and Israeli networks). The first people she was able to connect by this method were Egyptian journalist Ahmed El-Madhoun and Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary. By December 2023 200,000 Gazans (approximately 10% of the population) had received internet access through an eSIM provided by Connecting Humanity.

Coverage by country

Israel

On 11 October, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (KAN) started a channel that scrolls through the names of the people killed in the October 7 attack, much like the broadcasts on Israel's Memorial Day. On 22 October, home front alerts started showing in English on i24NEWS's English channel.

On 26 December, an anti-tank missile from a Hezbollah unit hit next to Channel 13 News team while they were interviewing farmer at Dovev, for an article following a prior Hezbollah assault that killed an employee of the Israel Electric Corporation, and injured five workers who were repairing electric lines. On 6 January, while an Israeli journalist crew carried out an interview in the middle of a road in Tuffah, they were fired upon. Omri Assenheim, who conducted the interview, commented that "journalism must be done during the war as well, even if it's dangerous. I don't have a death wish."

On 13 February, Israel's Second Authority for Television and Radio opened an inquiry into Channel 13 for a show panelist saying "Netanyahu Wants Hostages Dead". On February 20, A bill proposed by Zvika Fogel would grant the power to close local offices and restrict access to websites of international media outlets deemed "harmful to state security" to National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Between February and March 2024, mainstream Israeli television networks Channels 14 and 13 aired videos, reportedly described as "snuff films" which appear to show detained Palestinian prisoners being mistreated inside Israeli prisons. The videos are described as actual interrogation sessions of prisoners, who are shown bound and blindfolded, while being made to kneel on the floor. A warden is recorded stating "They have no mattresses ... They have nothing…we control them 100%—their food, their shackling, their sleep ... [we] show them we are the masters of the house".

Haaretz's Itay Rom has criticized the media for its alleged bias against Israel. He gave several examples of "flimsy reporting" from CNN, BBC and Sky News, of which he believes result from ingrained belief that Israel is the "villain" of the story, which allows any claim made against it—even ones that are proven false—to pass. He wrote that "while attitudes towards Israel's claims is somewhere along the spectrum between healthy journalistic skepticism and complete distrust, Hamas's claims about the numbers of killed civilians in the Strip are accepted as the word of God." He also has raised criticisms against Israeli media, much of which, he states, "ignores and erases the Gazan story".

Israeli comedy show Eretz Nehederet has aired several sketches in English since the beginning of the war, criticizing the BBC's alleged anti-Israel bias. One of the sketches shows the BBC taking Hamas's attribution at face value immediately, praising Hamas as “the most credible not-terrorist organization in the world” and ignoring a Hamas fighter that admits firing rocket at own hospital. Another sketch portrayed a sympathetic mock "interview" with Yahya Sinwar, stating "Hamas freedom fighters peacefully attacked Israel", and a mock BBC anchor saying "Hamas is left with no human shields at all! So unfair", later referring to Israeli kidnapped crying babies as "torturing him through sleep deprivation" and "occupying his house". The sketches went viral online.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has a designated Spokesperson's Unit which is responsible for the IDF's information policy and deals with the media relations during peace and wartime. It serves as a liaison between the military and the domestic and foreign media markets as well as the general public and is a key player for the public diplomacy of Israel.

Czechia

Public media such as ČT24 or iRozhlas and mainstream channels such as Seznam.cz have a strong pro-Israel stance.

France

At the start of Ramadan, the French newspaper Libération ran a cartoon mocking the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, showing a woman scolding a man chasing after rats and cockroaches because it was not yet time to break fast.

Qatar

On 25 October, Axios reported that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had asked Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani to moderate Al Jazeera's coverage of the war. It is believed that Blinken was referring to Al Jazeera's Arabic language channel and not its English channels.

Iran: Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting

Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting published images of the capture of commanders of Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijani army in September 2023 as the capture of Israeli commanders by Hamas. Mohammadreza Bagheri, a presenter at Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, called for the killing of more children, women, old women, the wounded and every single person who lives in Israel.

United Kingdom

In March 2024, analysis by the Muslim Council of Britain's Centre for Media Monitoring found that British media coverage had consistently been "favourable to an Israeli narrative which has constantly promoted the attacks on Gaza and in the West Bank as a war between light and darkness".

BBC

In October 2023, the BBC was criticized by journalists and the UK Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps, for using the term "militants" over "terrorists" to refer to members of Hamas, which the British government considers to be a terrorist organization. The BBC responded with a statement saying that to report objectively, they would not use the term "terrorist" without attribution, and that they had featured contributors who have described Hamas as terrorists.

In November 2023 BBC News Arabic launched Gaza Daily in response to the ongoing conflict and to provide any listeners in Gaza with the latest information and developments, along with safety advice and where to find humanitarian aid.

Analysis of BBC coverage by openDemocracy published at the start of 2024 found Palestinian perspectives were "totally absent" from the network's coverage, and that the BBC's coverage regularly described Israeli deaths with words like "murder", "massacre", "atrocity", and "slaughter" but not for Palestinian deaths.

Dismissal of Steve Bell

On 19 October, The Guardian announced the dismissal of editorial cartoonist Steve Bell, who had been contributing to the newspaper since 1983, after he made a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holding a scalpel and preparing to make a Gaza Strip-shaped incision in his abdomen. While Bell said it was inspired by a similar caricature of US President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War, he said he was accused of antisemitism for allegedly evoking the "pound of flesh" demanded by the Jewish character Shylock in William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice.

Other

Egyptian comedian, television host and surgeon Bassem Youssef, who is best known for his satirical comedy, was interviewed by Piers Morgan for his Piers Morgan Uncensored show on October 17 and November 1. Youssef pointed out the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the juxtaposition against the Ukrainian-Russia war and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war often in his satirical humor.

In January 2024, a news report on Sky News received heavy criticism for describing a lethal Israeli shooting of a three-year-old toddler as the death of a "young lady" after "accidentally a stray bullet found its way into the van". Sky News apologized "unreservedly" to MK Danny Danon for the "complete inappropriateness " of a Sky correspondent asking Danon how his calls for the "relocation" for Gazans were different than "relocations" that occurred during World War II. In an open letter, Danon urged Sky to fire the woman who had asked him the question.

A January 2024 interview between Julia Hartley-Brewer and Mustafa Barghouti on TalkTV sparked more than 15,000 complaints to Ofcom after Hartley-Brewer repeatedly cut off and screamed at Barghouti.

United States

General coverage

Following the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, U.S. media sources were criticized for failing to mention Bushnell's reason for self-immolating — opposition to the Gaza genocide.

Axios reported tensions between White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. Y.L. Al-Sheikh, in an editorial in The Nation, wrote that if Biden was the public face of his administration's policies in Gaza, then Kirby, Jean-Pierre, and Matthew Miller were its "robotic enforcers."

CNN

A report by The Intercept detailed that CNN's coverage of the war undergoes review by the Israeli military's censor. The report indicated that terms such as "war crime" and "genocide" were not allowed to be used on-air. An additional report by The Intercept found major U.S. media outlets skewed their coverage in favor of Israelis, using the word "horrific" to describe Israeli suffering 36 times versus only 4 times for Palestinians. It also found the words "child" or "children" were rarely used when discussing Palestinian minors. CNN faced criticism for not airing South Africa's introductory remarks during the South Africa v. Israel case at the International Court of Justice.

CNN staff accused the network of being so biased in favor of Israel that it was committing "journalistic malpractice." In leaked audio from an internal meeting, host Christine Amanpour expressed "real distress" over CNN's editorial policies regarding the war. In an op-ed in Al Jazeera, American University of Beirut professor Rami George Khouri stated, "Mainstream media organisations in the West, from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to CNN and NBC, have long helped Israel spread its propaganda and achieve its political aims... For example, they usually refer to blatant acts of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement in Gaza as 'evacuations', and claim Israel is 'defending itself' against 'terror.'"

The Wall Street Journal

A WSJ article in early February 2024 by Steven Stalinsky called Dearborn, Michigan, the United States' "jihad capital" and was condemned as racist. Police protection ramped up in Dearborn following Stalinsky's article, with U.S. President Joe Biden stating that Dearborn shouldn't be blamed for "the words of a small few." Dearborn mayor Abdullah Hammoud called Stalinsky's editorial "bigoted" and "Islamophobic." Congressmember Pramila Jayapal and Senator Gary Peters both condemned Stalinsky's article.

The New York Times

A New York Times article in early February 2024 by Thomas Friedman compared Middle Eastern countries to parasites and insects and was condemned as racist. The New York Times was accused of major discrepancies between its coverage of the allegation of sexual assault on 7 October and family testimony. One of the article's authors, Anat Schwartz, was found to have liked posts calling to "turn Gaza into a slaughterhouse." The Intercept stated that the New York Times had responded to pressures from CAMERA and "consistently delegitimized Palestinian deaths and cultivated 'a gross imbalance' in coverage to pro-Israeli sources and voices." Writing in LitHub, professor Steven Thrasher wrote that The New York Times' coverage of the war was "assisting the military goals of American empire." In April 2024, The Intercept reported on a leaked internal memo from The New York Times, which told writers to avoid the terms "genocide," "ethnic cleansing," and "occupied territory" and not to use the term Palestine "except in very rare cases."

Double standards in media coverage

Accusations of double standards in media coverage of conflicts have emerged. Critics said that Ukraine's right to self-defense is often commended by international leaders, yet the same support is not always extended to Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza. Jordan's Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi, has similarly accused the international community of applying "double standards" when it comes to Palestinians. Vidhya Krishnan opined that reporting pattern from past wars and crises by Western newsrooms is journalism of the victor in service of supremacist colonialism.

BBC coverage

On 23 November 2023, eight UK-based journalists employed by the BBC wrote to Al Jazeera to register their concern over the double standard of the BBC's coverage of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, contrasting it with the "unflinching" reporting on Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The journalists accused the media corporation of omitting historical context and investing in humanizing Israeli victims while failing to humanize Palestinian victims. In an op-ed, Jeremy Corbyn criticized the BBC for not airing South Africa's court presentation during South Africa v. Israel yet showing Israel's defense the following day.

Australian media outlets

In an open letter to Australian media outlets, journalists criticized a double standard in trust given to the IDF, stating, "The Israeli government is also an actor in this conflict, with mounting evidence it is committing war crimes and a documented history of sharing misinformation. The Israeli government's version of events should never be reported verbatim without context or fact-checking."

The Media Watch of ABC News Australia on 19 February 2024 argued that The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald were running more stories on the 7 October attack, humanising the Israeli victims between October 2023 and February 2024, while the Palestinian casualties during the conflict within the same timeframe received less news coverage despite the greater death toll and crises such as starvation. Documents released from ABC News in March 2024 showed staff concerns about persistent pro-Israel bias, including "accepting 'Israeli facts and figures with no ifs or buts' while questioning Palestinian viewpoints and avoiding the word 'Palestine' itself."

U.S. media coverage

In an investigation by The Guardian, it was reported that CNN staff had criticized their network's coverage of the war, charging that it had promoted Israeli propaganda, and gave more attention to Israeli suffering, and the Israeli narrative of the war. One staffer claimed that this bias was systematic and institutionalized, as many journalists' stories were forced to be cleared by channel's Jerusalem bureau before publication. Staffers claimed that statements by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were rarely reported on, while Israeli statements were taken at face value. The staff blamed CNN's newly appointed CNN director Mark Thompson for the biased reporting. A CNN spokesperson denied the charges of bias.

Writing in Time Magazine, writer Elena Dudum criticized the U.S. media's use of passive voice when discussing Palestinians in Gaza, writing, "The obfuscation of responsibility is facilitated by a structure often overlooked since grade school: grammar. At this moment, grammar has the indelible power to become a tool of the oppressor, with the passive voice the most relied-upon weapon of all."

Arrests, threats, cyberattacks and censorship

Arrest of journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that to the growing number of journalists killed and injured in the war, journalists in Israel and the Palestinian territories have also been subject to 13 arrests, as well as "numerous assaults, threats, cyberattacks, and censorship".

In October, 10 journalists were arrested by the IDF, including Lama Khater, a freelance writer for Middle East Monitor and the Palestinian news website Felesteen; Mohamed Bader of al-Hadath newspaper; and the 62-year-old journalist Nawaf Al-Amer of the Sanad news agency. In November, a further three journalists were arrested, including Ameer Abo Iram of the Ramallah-based news outlet Al-Ersal, Mohamad Al-Atrash, a host of Radio Alam, and Amer Abu Arafa, a freelance reporter for the Quds News Network and Shehab News Agency.

Threats, cyberattacks and censorship

Various threats have also been made towards journalists over the phone, or by Israeli soldiers and police at borders and checkpoints. In October, an RT Arabic crew was stopped by Israeli police and warned that they would risk arrest if they returned to the location. On 5 November, a team of journalists from the German broadcaster ARD, including Jan-Christoph Kitzler, were stopped by Israeli soldiers to the south of Hebron and threatened with weapons. They were also questioned about whether they were Jewish, according to the German news service Tagesschau and Haaretz, with one team member being called a traitor. Kitzler attributed the aggression to the reporting by the team on Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, writing on X that "it's noteworthy that many of the soldiers in that area are settlers themselves, creating an environment where journalists are generally unwelcome."

Media teams operation in the region have also been exposed to various kinds of cyberattack, with the Jerusalem Post website going down on 9 October, with Anonymous Sudan claiming responsibility. The Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa also experienced a cyberattack on 18 October, as did Al-Jazeera English on 31 October and Al-Mamlaka TV on 3 November.

Since the conflict began, the Israeli authorities have also ordered the shutting down of several media outlet, including the West Bank-based J-Media agency and the Hebron-based Dream radio station. Israel has also propose emergency regulations to halt media broadcasts that harm "national morale", and threatened to close Al-Jazeera's local offices and block the outlet from freely reporting. On 30 October 30, Rolling Stone said its journalist Jesse Rosenfeld had been denied press credentials by the Israeli government after having covered the Benjamin Netanyahu's administration critically.

Allegations were raised in early November 2023 that the IDF had foiled a number of catfishing or honeypot scams on social media with the majority clustered on Instagram. Multiple accounts reportedly aligned with Iran had made contact with IDF troops and worked to gain the troops trust before asking for potentially sensitive information. The IDF did not comment on if the scams had produced any actionable intelligence for Hamas.

Suspension of Muslim journalists by MSNBC

During the war, there was an incident involving the suspension of three Muslim journalists from MSNBC: Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohieddine, and Ali Velshi. The network's decision coincided with escalating tensions in the Gaza Strip. Hasan's show on Peacock, Mohieddine's scheduled appearances and Velshi's anchoring duties were all affected. Despite the changes, MSNBC maintained that these were coincidental and not indicative of any sidelining. The incident sparked a debate about potential religious bias, with critics suggesting that the anchors were targeted based on their faith.

Firing of Antoinette Lattouf by ABC

Antoinette Lattouf, an Australian journalist at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was fired after posting a Human Rights Watch report on her social media account. The firing sparked an hearing by the Fair Work Commission. Staff at ABC threatened to go on strike in opposition to Lattouf's firing. Reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald showed a group of pro-Israeli lobbyists had actively campaigned for Lattouf's removal. On 20 February, ABC stated it had rejected a freedom of information request regarding complaints made by staff members. On 20 March, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance called for the dismissal of ABC's Managing Director David Anderson for his role in firing Lattouf.

Los Angeles Times partial ban on Gaza reporting

In response to around 36 to 38 of its journalists signing the 9 November 2023 statement, "We condemn Israel's killing of journalists in Gaza and urge integrity in Western media coverage of Israel's atrocities against Palestinians", the Los Angeles Times banned them from reporting on the war in Gaza for three months. Suhauna Hussein, one of the journalists, stated, "Yes it's true we've been taken off cover[a]ge, which in effect removes a great many Muslim journalists and most [if] not all Palestinians at the LA Times from coverage". Altogether, over 600 journalists signed the statement. Los Angeles Times management announced the ban in mid-November, stating that the journalists' statement violated the newspaper's ethics policy. The ban affected an ongoing project at the newspaper, the "Gaza Voices Project", in which Palestinians wrote their own obituaries for use in case they were killed, in that several journalists with linguistic, cultural and contextual knowledge were blocked from contributing. One journalist described the ban as having a chilling effect.

Censorship of social media content

Major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have been accused censoring or limiting the reach of pro-Palestine voices during Israel's war. Users claim practices such as shadowbanning, where content is hidden or its reach reduced when using certain keyword or hashtags like "FreePalestine" or "IStandWithPalestine". Instagram has also been accused of taking down posts mentioning Palestine – an issue that Meta has attributed to a bug. Instagram's "see translation" feature erroneously added the word "terrorist" to some Palestinian users' bios; the issue was later fixed and Meta issued an apology.

Some people who posted in support of Palestine or the civilians impacted by the bombing campaign in Gaza claimed that they were purposefully censored or their posts were restricted from being seen by a broader audience. Thousands of pro-Palestinian supporters claimed that Facebook and Instagram suppressed or removed posts that did not break the platforms' rules. One user on Instagram reported that her Instagram Stories posts about developments in Palestine received fewer views and did not appear on her friends' accounts, her user name became unsearchable and friends were unable to interact with her posts. The user's report was one of hundreds according to social media watchdog group 7amleh, the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, who stated that social media websites shadow banned content related to the conflict. A similar trend was seen during May 2021 where there was a series of escalations in Palestine.

In mid-October, the Communications and digital minister Fahmi Fadzil confirmed that the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) would meet with TikTok's parent company ByteDance following complaints from Malaysian TikTok users that content containing words like Hamas were removed by the social media company.

Suspension of social media accounts

Meta, Facebook's parent company, suspended the Palestinian Quds News Network (QNN), the largest Palestinian news page on its platform. QNN, which had both Arabic and English news pages and 10 million followers, reported on the conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The network criticized the suspension as a violation of freedom of opinion and expression and claimed it was in alignment with the Israeli government.

On 13 October, Meta restricted access to the Instagram account of photojournalist and influencer Motaz Azaiza after he shared footage of the aftermath of an Israeli bombardment that killed 15 of his family members. Access was restored on 14 October.

On 25 October 2023, Meta's Instagram suspended "Eye on Palestine"! a pro-Palestinian Instagram account that was a key source of news on Gaza which documented daily Israeli abuses and violations in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip during the Israeli aggression. This led to huge anger and a backlash from activists and media personnel online. The page resumed activities on 27 October after the team discussed the issues with Meta.

Closure of Al Jazeera by Israel

On October 15, 2023, Israel's Communications minister Shlomo Karhi said he was seeking the closure of Al Jazeera's bureau in Israel, adding at the time that the proposal was being analysed by Israeli security officials and legal experts. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the proposed shutdown, saying, "plurality of media voices is essential in order to hold power to account, especially in times of war."

Israel's government, however, left Al Jazeera out of a decision about emergency media regulations set for the conflict that included the shutdown of Lebanese channel Al Mayadeen and the seizure of its equipment in November 2023. Then-Israeli Foreign minister Eli Cohen said he was still in favor of a crackdown against Al Jazeera.

On April 1, 2024, Israel's parliament passed a bill authorizing the Prime Minister of Israel to shut down foreign channels who were considered threats to national security, including Al Jazeera. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said the bill was "concerning." Al Jazeera released a statement saying, "This latest measure comes as part of a series of systematic Israeli attacks to silence Al Jazeera". Reporters Without Borders stated, "Israel is using every possible method to try to silence Al Jazeera for its coverage of the reality of the fate of Palestinians". The chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists stated, "It’s another example of the tightening of the free press and the stranglehold the Israeli government would like to exercise. It’s an incredibly worrying move by the government." In a statement, PEN America said, "The Israeli government must reverse this decision immediately, stop using sweeping laws to clamp down on the media".

On May 5, 2024, Israel's Prime Minister cabinet voted unanimously to permanently shut Al Jazeera's office in the country and authorized the seizure of its equipment. On the same day, all Al Jazeera broadcasts (in English and in Arabic) went off air in Israel. In response to the news, the Foreign Press Association stated Israel had joined "a dubious club of authoritarian governments" by banning the network. The deputy general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists stated, "Closing down media, closing down television stations is a sort of thing that despots do". The UN Secretary-General spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric condemned the network's closure.

Impact of misinformation

Misinformation and propaganda have presented a notable problem during the conflict. False information and deceptive content have circulated extensively, especially in countries such as Indonesia. This has raised worries about the possibility of misinformation escalating tensions and playing a role in fueling the conflict. Media reporters relied on OSINT information for their coverage of the war, contributing to the spread of misinformation.

Mainstream media extensively reported on the conflict, emphasizing the human toll and challenges faced by journalists and news platforms. However, distinguishing fact from fiction proved difficult due to the conflict's intricacies.

Reliability of military claims

Some organizations, including the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate and staff at CNN, have criticized Western media outlets for repeating "Israeli military propaganda" without proper journalistic interrogation. In March 2024, journalist Mehdi Hasan announced he was starting a series debunking Israeli misinformation used during the war, stating, "Israeli officials have told so many lies since October 7 with so little pushback from the media that it’s hard to keep up."

Social media and misinformation

A group of experts and journalists said to Al Jazeera that the systemic "bias in favor of Israel" is "irreparably damaging" the credibility of news agencies considered "mainstream" in the eyes of Arabs and others.

Journalist Janine Zacharia stated in relation to the war that online social media encourage the spread of "hot takes" and make the rapid dissemination of false information easy. She argued in favour of mainstream media, stating that "legitimate credible fact-based news organization[s]" differ from fake news producers in that the "legitimate" media admit their errors. Zacharia said that longer articles about the war "must mention" the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the 2006 Palestinian legislative election won by Hamas, and the 2006–2007 Fatah–Hamas conflict.

Controversies

"Screams Without Words"

In February 2024, Anat Schwartz, one of the authors of a New York Times article about alleged sexual violence on 7 October, was found to have liked incendiary posts on social media calling to turn Gaza into a "slaughterhouse". This came after heavy criticism about the quality of the article's reporting. The publication of the article was followed by internal worries about the strength of its reporting. As an Intercept report criticizing the article stated that these worries caused an episode of The Daily podcast about the report to be set aside, which the management treated as a newsroom leak, an internal investigation into the leak began, lasting multiple weeks. This caused tensions with the New York Times Guild (the paper's union, which is represented by NewsGuild-CWA) and dissention within the organization. The union alleged that the investigators have been especially interested in employees of Middle Eastern or North African ethnic origin—and that they have been poring over the membership and communications of an affinity group of these employees—characterizing this as "racially motivated" activity; NYT denied this. Summarizing the controversy, Al Jazeera stated that the claims in "Screams Without Words" "have since been revealed to be unsubstantiated, demonstrating the Times' pro-Israeli/anti-Palestinian bias and leaving the paper's newsroom riven by dissent."

The Wall Street Journal

On January 29, The Wall Street Journal reported the key claims that the dossier made. Al-Jazeera English characterized the Journal article as a "journalistic failure", noting that the authors did not fact check Israeli claims that one in 10 of UNRWA's staff members had "links to (Hamas or other) militants" or even specify what "links" meant.

Palestinian-Canadian rights lawyer Diana Buttu opined that the "problem with these types of allegations is that they adopt the Israeli narrative without questioning or second-guessing it." Al-Jazeera further characterized the article as a "journalistic failure", noting that the authors did not fact check Israeli claims that one in 10 of UNRWA's staff members had "links to (Hamas or other) militants" or even specify what "links" meant.

In commentary for The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill criticized the article as it:

• "read to him… like an Israeli government press release filled with unsubstantiated allegations" which was then "passed off as an article" in one of American's leading newspapers and given the paper's influence, circulated "like wildfire" and was used to pressure more governments to cut funding to UNRWA
• accused 10% of UNRWA staff of having "links" to terrorists, but did not "even" explain what is meant by "links"
• failed to mention that Hamas is Gaza's government, "not just the Qassam brigades", and that ties to Hamas are thus not the "smoking gun" that the Journal "portrayed them to be"

Honest Reporting

On 8 November, Honest Reporting, a pro-Israel media watchdog group, reported that several Gaza-based journalists, including those working with AP and Reuters, "appeared to have been embedded with Hamas" during the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel in violation of journalism ethics. Israeli Government officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu corroborated the report. CNN and AP ended their relationship with one of these photographers, Hassan Eslaiah. Within a week, Honest Reporting conceded that Reuters, the Associated Press, CNN, and The New York Times had no prior knowledge of the attacks. Reuters noted that it was "deeply concerned about the irresponsibility of Honest Reporting in publishing such damaging accusations."

Ulf Kristersson

After Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson used the word "folk" (people) during a November 21 Q&A session before interrupting himself, accusations that he had intended to use the word "folkmord" (genocide) circulated online. The incident was covered by outlets such as TRT World and RT DE. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Kristersson "says Israel has the right to commit genocide before correcting himself to say the right to self-defense", while other media such as Pakistani newspaper Dawn and Middle East Eye used more cautious language.

Mattias Heldner, head of the linguistics department at Stockholm University, pointed out that the sentence structure of Kristersson's speech led up to the words "to defense" rather than "genocide", noting that he had not said "to commit" prior to saying the disputed word.

Associated Press

Survivors and victim relatives of the Nova festival massacre filed a lawsuit in Florida against Associated Press for working with four freelance photojournalists who were embedded with terrorists who overran southern communities on October 7.

Journalist casualties

The conflict has also had a devastating impact on journalists covering it, with a number of them losing their lives or sustaining injuries while reporting in Gaza. Nearly 75% of journalists killed worldwide in 2023 were Palestinian reporters who died in Israeli attacks on Gaza.

See also

• History of Palestinian journalism
• International reactions to the Israel–Hamas war
• Media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
• Outline of the Israel–Hamas war

References

Explanatory notes

Citations

External links

• Amir Gera (November 21, 2023). "The testimonies of foreign journalists who cover the Hamas massacre". KAN. Retrieved November 27, 2023.

Articles connexes

1. Israel–Hamas war
2. Misinformation in the Israel–Hamas war
3. Casualties of the Israel–Hamas war
4. Outline of the Israel–Hamas war
5. United States support for Israel in the Israel–Hamas war
6. Media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
7. International reactions to the Israel–Hamas war
8. Israel–Hamas war protests
9. War crimes in the Israel–Hamas war
10. List of journalists killed in the Israel–Hamas war
11. Wikipedia and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
12. Israel–Hamas war protests in Israel
13. Effects of the Israel–Hamas war
14. Diplomatic impact of the Israel–Hamas war
15. Killing of journalists in the Israel–Hamas war
16. Sexual and gender-based violence in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel
17. Mass detentions in the Israel–Hamas war
18. Israel–Hamas war protests in the United States
19. Anat Schwartz
20. Effect of the Israel–Hamas war on children in the Gaza Strip