A stack of newspapers. Credit: Daniel R. Blume via Wikimedia Commons.
The role of journalism is to hold power accountable, not to wield it through moral advocacy.
In the wake of Oct. 7, Israel has been fighting not only a brutal war against Hamas but also a second, less visible battle in the court of public opinion. Mainstream media coverage of Gaza has increasingly blurred the line between journalism and activism, sacrificing context for outrage and omitting facts that complicate a preferred narrative.
A widely circulated photo of a malnourished child that was used to suggest Israeli “starvation tactics” turned out to depict a child with a rare genetic disorder. By the time that fact emerged, the emotional impact had already solidified public perception. Meanwhile, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry continues to push unverifiable casualty figures, often including militants and natural deaths, with minimal media scrutiny.
Take, for example, the ubiquitous headlines accusing Israel of engineering a humanitarian catastrophe. Often absent from those reports is a crucial fact: Hamas systematically loots the aid convoys and food warehouses, diverting the supplies to its fighters or selling them on the black market to fund its operations.
A July 27 New York Times article claimed there was “no evidence” that Hamas had stolen U.N. humanitarian aid, citing unnamed Israeli military officials. Yet Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, has publicly stated that Hamas diverts 70% to 90% of deliveries.
Israel Defense Forces field intelligence estimates that Hamas has seized up to 25% of aid shipments. A senior U.S. State Department official recently described “endless video evidence” of Hamas stealing aid, footage that is widely available across multiple platforms.
When journalists assert with certainty that there is “no evidence whatsoever,” despite overwhelming documentation of Hamas seizing aid trucks and reselling their contents in Gaza markets, this is not balanced reporting. It is a narrative-driven obfuscation.
Reports from the Qatari-owned newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed confirm that on July 27, the first day of Israel’s humanitarian pause, more than half of the 130 Egyptian aid trucks entering Gaza were looted, with many resold in local markets.
This directly contradicts The New York Times and a U.S. Agency for International Development report denying evidence of aid theft. Former U.S. envoy David Satterfield has likewise warned that aid distributed through groups such as the Palestinian Red Crescent lacks transparency and is highly vulnerable to diversion by Hamas or criminal gangs.
A deeper issue lies in journalism’s abandonment of its own standards. For two generations, journalism and social sciences departments have increasingly prioritized ideology over objectivity. As Theodore Glasser, professor emeritus of communication at Stanford University, puts it: “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”
This mindset now dominates many newsrooms. The result? Coverage often seeks emotional resonance at the expense of analytical rigor.
Journalism students are now encouraged to become “agents of change” rather than impartial observers. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has openly stated his goal is not just to inform but to “help people and provoke action.” That ethos has spread far beyond the opinion section and into the framing of hard news.
When activism replaces impartiality, the truth becomes negotiable. Media coverage of Israel has become the prime example of this shift.
From the start of the conflict, Israel has been portrayed as reckless and disproportionate. Major outlets like The New York Times routinely lead with images of Gaza’s destruction, while crucial context, such as Hamas’s use of human shields or its vast tunnel networks under schools and hospitals, is often buried deep within the story, if mentioned at all.
The BBC has repeatedly parroted Hamas’s claims without adequate vetting. One striking case was its report that Israel had bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, killing hundreds of people. Only days later, after Israeli and U.S. intelligence pointed to a misfired Palestinian rocket, did the BBC quietly correct the record. But by then, the false narrative had gone global.
This pattern of distortion isn’t new. In the 1990s, a major U.S. newspaper published a photo of an Israeli soldier in a tank seemingly aimed at Palestinian schoolgirls. The photo was real but misleading; the photojournalist had positioned himself to create a false impression. Such manipulative visual framing continues today, as viral images and videos spread with zero context or verification.
Younger audiences today increasingly rely on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram for their news. These formats reward emotion over evidence, spectacle over substance. A 15-second video showing civilians suffering in Gaza can garner millions of views while leaving out Hamas’s deliberate embedding among civilians or the lengths to which Israel goes to avoid collateral damage.
A 2023 Gallup poll found that just 32% of Americans trust the media to report the news fully and fairly, a record low. That is not an anomaly. It reflects growing public awareness that news outlets have abandoned their core commitments to accuracy, skepticism and balance.
Israel has become the most glaring casualty of this decline, portrayed as genocidal, stripped of its right to self-defense and judged by moral standards applied to no other democracy engaged in war with a terrorist organization embedded in a civilian population.
The role of journalism is to hold power accountable, not to wield it through moral advocacy. It must report the world as it is, not as activists wish it to be. Israel’s war against Hamas is more than a regional conflict; it is a test case for whether the media can still deliver facts in full context, even when those facts run against popular sentiment.
If journalism is to remain a cornerstone of democracy, then it must reclaim its foundational principles to verify, contextualize and inform, not distort, omit or manipulate.
The article appeared in the Jewish News Syndicate on July 30, 2025.
Dr. Eric R. Mandel is the director of MEPIN, the Middle East Political Information Network, and the senior security editor of The Jerusalem Report. He briefs members of Congress, their foreign-policy teams, and the U.S. State Department on Middle East security and strategy.