Media running Hamas narrative on Gaza hospital 'directly contributed' to endangering US embassies abroad
The legacy media's widely panned coverage of last week's Gaza hospital exposition has had a ripple effect across the world that goes beyond the usual ramifications of a journalistic error.
Several news organizations from The New York Times, to CNN, to the BBC, to the Associated Press rushed to report claims made by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry that Israel bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital through an airstrike resulting in over 500 civilian casualties. But subsequent reporting and intelligence found it was an explosion in the hospital's parking lot stemming from a misfired rocket fired by Hamas ally Islamic Jihad, resulting in a death toll a fraction of what Hamas had first alleged.
The fake news prompted several Arab leaders to cancel their meetings with President Biden, who had flown overseas only having sat down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Morgan Ortagus, former State Department spokesperson during the Trump administration and founder of Polaris National Security, told Fox News Digital the media's disinformation push "directly contributed" to the riots that erupted outside U.S. embassies in several Middle East countries which continues a ripple effect, putting Americans overseas in danger.
"That in turn requires the military to scramble to send more reinforcements to the embassies. And, if the riots get worse, we will have to evacuate," Ortagus said. "It is enormously expensive and requires us to divert forces from other theaters, like Asia, to deal with the emergency situation created from actual fake news."
Hamas' narrative was debunked by evidence brought forth by the IDF and intelligence from the Biden administration. In-depth analysis from multiple news outlets, including those who initially peddled the disinformation, also concluded Israel was not responsible for the explosion.
"Such a glaring example of major outlets messing up on a very consequential event helps explain why trust in traditional news media has been falling fast," The Atlantic's Yascha Mounk wrote Monday. "Journalists and media executives understandably tend to apportion blame for their failings elsewhere. If people no longer trust quality outlets, the fault must lie with the ‘misinformation’ they encounter on social media. But such an easy allocation of responsibility won’t work when, marching in unison, major news organizations seem to have fouled up in as blatant a way as they have over this past week."
The New York Times, far from the only outlet that botched its coverage of the explosion, received the most condemnation for sending a push alert to its readers blaring the headline "Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say." Critics also pointed out how the article used a photo showing Gaza devastation unrelated to the one it was reporting on. CNN has also added a note to its initial reporting, admitting it "did not clearly attribute claims about Israel’s responsibility to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza."
On Monday, The Times published a lengthy editor's note admitting it relied "too heavily" on Hamas' word.
"Early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was," the Times acknowledged. "Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified. Newsroom leaders continue to examine procedures around the biggest breaking news events — including for the use of the largest headlines in the digital report — to determine what additional safeguards may be warranted."
The Free Press editor Bari Weiss, a former Times opinion page editor, raked the paper over the coals for "publishing Hamas PR" and its subsequent "soft non-apology," juxtaposing this episode to the drama that unfolded after the Times ran the now-infamous Sen. Tom Cotton op-ed in 2020 resulting in internal turmoil and multiple resignations despite the fact, as she pointed out, "there was not a single correctable error in the [Cotton] piece."
Ortagus drilled down what's she believes is at the center this debacle, telling Fox News Digital "the media has an antisemitism problem."
"But it's not just the media-- almost every country in the Middle East, the United Nations, and Democratic Members of Congress, such as Rashida Tlaib, also rushed to believe the word of baby-butchering terrorists who just days before burned whole families alive," Ortagus said. "All of these groups peddled disinformation that caused riots on the streets, and they put both American service members and American diplomats in harm's way. The myth of an independent, non-biased media died a long time ago— now they're just showing us who they really are."
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman knocked his paper for its coverage of the story in a podcast appearance, saying a "newspaper we know very well" was among those that credulously spread the Hamas framing.
"Islamic Jihad may have achieved its greatest P.R. victory in this war by blowing up its own hospital — inadvertently, by the way," he said. "By all evidence, they launched a part of a missile barrage toward Israel, and as often happens, one of their rockets failed and landed in the parking lot of this hospital… Headlines everywhere — Israel attacks hospital — including in a newspaper that we know very well. And by the time the truth had a chance to put its shoes on, this inflamed the entire Arab world."
NPR's David Folkenflik said Hamas was used as a "key source" by numerous outlets and scolded them for prioritizing speed over accuracy.
"The audiences' perceptions of media outlets' fairness determine how much trust they have — not just in the veracity of specific coverage but the independence of their journalists," he wrote. "Speed may matter a lot to readers, viewers and listeners. Accuracy and fairness still matter more, especially when stakes are so high."
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