How Conflict Reporting in Gaza Is Shaped by Propaganda and Institutional Bias

In many conflict zones, especially where press freedom is absent or heavily restricted, international media outlets increasingly rely on local freelancers for coverage. This model is largely driven by cost-cutting: as traditional newsrooms face shrinking revenues, they often replace full-time foreign correspondents with local stringers. This approach carries significant risks in authoritarian or militant-controlled areas. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Gaza, where major news organizations like the BBC, Associated Press (AP), and The New York Times frequently source information from unaffiliated individuals operating within a Hamas-run territory.

Many of these local reporters either work under Hamas’s influence or are directly affiliated with the group. In such an environment, information is rarely neutral. It is filtered, shaped, and disseminated in ways that align with Hamas’s messaging goals. In addition to the inherent risk of relying on stringers rather than trained journalists, further cost-cutting carries an added risk. Many newsrooms don’t even work with stringers but instead purchase reporting from wire services like AP or Reuters, redistributing the same reports to multiple outlets. This process unintentionally amplifies the same misinformation or one-sided narratives across different media, giving the false impression of corroboration through repetition. As a result, international audiences are presented not with unbiased accounts but with narratives often shaped or constrained by a terrorist organization.

This outsourcing model has created a vulnerability in international journalism, transforming news outlets into conduits through which propaganda may be laundered into mainstream coverage. Stories originating in Hamas-controlled environments are often relayed via wire services like AP or Reuters and rebroadcast by global outlets without rigorous vetting. This was made starkly clear in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, when individuals later shown to have been embedded with Hamas during the assault were revealed to have contributed photos and coverage used by AP and other outlets. A class-action lawsuit has since been filed in the United States against the Associated Press, accusing the agency of aiding and abetting terrorism by continuing to use a stringer in Gaza after being informed of his Hamas affiliations. This revelation has fueled concerns that major wire services are unintentionally providing platforms to individuals who may be aligned with terrorist organizations, further compromising the credibility of their reporting from conflict zones. This is strikingly one of many examples.

But the issue runs deeper than flawed sourcing. As journalist Matti Friedman revealed in a landmark 2014 article in The Atlantic, editorial decisions within Western newsrooms often skew coverage long before it reaches the public. During his time at the Associated Press in Jerusalem, Friedman observed a strong editorial culture that discouraged stories which humanized Israelis or depicted Palestinian actions, especially those of Hamas, in a critical light. Friedman described how reporting on Hamas’s use of human shields or its intimidation of journalists was actively suppressed. Balanced or nuanced coverage that complicated the dominant victim-oppressor binary was often dismissed or buried by editors who were ideologically predisposed, concerned about professional consequences, or concerned about Hamas cutting off access. According to Friedman, the Western press corps in Israel had effectively adopted “the Hamas narrative” as its editorial lens.

Journalists on the ground know that their access, safety, and career prospects may depend on delivering stories that conform to Hamas’s preferred narrative. Stories that portray Israel in a complex or sympathetic light are often killed or sidelined. Meanwhile, content that aligns with Hamas’s messaging goals, regardless of verification, is more likely to be published and amplified. This is not the result of a deliberate conspiracy, but rather a systemic bias that emerges from a mix of fear, ideology, and institutional dynamics.

These dynamics are further reinforced by global forces that have long worked to delegitimize Israel. For decades, international institutions such as the United Nations and its agencies—particularly the UN Human Rights Council and UNRWA—have been leveraged by the Arab world and their allies to isolate Israel diplomatically and morally. Much of this campaign was seeded during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union launched a deliberate strategy to export antisemitism, often disguised as anti-Zionism.

The Soviets viewed alignment with the Arab world as a means of extending their influence across the Middle East and the Global South. As part of this effort, Soviet propaganda reframed Zionism as a form of racism and imperialism. They trained and funded Arab regimes and terrorist organizations, while distributing literature and pseudo-academic work that depicted Jews and Israel as conspiratorial enemies of the people. This culminated in the infamous 1975 UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which declared that “Zionism is racism,” a resolution backed by the Soviet bloc and only rescinded in 1991.

The Soviet-Arab alliance played a central role in embedding anti-Israel narratives into international legal frameworks, human rights institutions, and Western academic and activist circles. This partnership promoted a worldview in which Israel was not viewed as a sovereign nation like any other, but rather as a symbol of Western imperialism and settler-colonialism; ideas that were historically and factually ungrounded but which were reenforced by the Goebbels-style mechanism of repetition of a falsehood until it becomes unquestioned truth. These ideas, often couched in the language of anti-colonialism or critical theory, framed Zionism as a form of racialized oppression rather than a national liberation movement.

Western universities became key incubators for these ideological frameworks. Over time, entire academic disciplines, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, began to normalize these perspectives as intellectual orthodoxy. As successive cohorts of students passed through these programs, many carried these frameworks into their professional lives. Graduates took positions at human rights NGOs, media outlets, think tanks, UN agencies, and policy advisory roles, where they continued to apply the same analytical lens they had absorbed in university.

This is how the ideas appear to have migrated: not through conspiracy, but through institutional dissemination. A generation shaped by academic narratives that cast Israel as a uniquely malignant actor went on to shape the content and priorities of the very organizations that inform international opinion. These graduates didn’t need to coordinate; they simply brought with them a shared worldview, reenforced in their ever-growing echo chamber, that now permeates editorial decisions of newsrooms, priority-setting and evaluation by NGOs, and the legal arguments advanced in international bodies. On the backdrop of a polarized ideological framework, a profound lack of curiosity whereby critical thought is displaced by an eagerness to thump our opponent over the head, and an instinctive dismissal of self-inquiry as a form of betrayal of moral purity, there is no space in which to question these truths.

What emerged is a self-reinforcing ecosystem. NGOs publish reports based on ideologically aligned narratives or questionable sourcing. Journalists cite these reports and amplify their claims into mainstream coverage. International bodies then reference this coverage as evidence for further condemnation or investigation. Meanwhile, on-the-ground reporting from Gaza often passes through a Hamas-controlled information environment, reinforcing the same narratives from the opposite end of the pipeline.

This creates a closed circuit of perception: from politicized academic theory, to advocacy reporting, to media dissemination, to institutional action. The result is a deeply skewed portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that consistently highlights Israeli culpability while minimizing or erasing the role of Hamas, regional dynamics, Israeli security concerns, or the complexities of modern asymmetrical warfare.

The effects are profound. Today’s human rights discourse, journalistic framing, and even international legal standards are increasingly shaped by ideological assumptions that originated in academic critique but have become operationalized across the institutions that claim to speak for objective truth or universal justice. Through repetition and cross-referencing, these narratives accrue legitimacy, even when they are built on selective, distorted, or outright manipulated foundations.

None of this should distract from the very real suffering of civilians in Gaza. War is horrific, always. The images coming out of Gaza are harrowing, and the human cost is immense. Nor should this be mistaken for endorsement of a continuation of the war in Gaza, nor condemnation or endorsement of any particular Israeli policy. It is to say we must distinguish between the reality of war, which is always brutal and devastating, and the narrative about war, which is carefully shaped by various actors with vested interests.

Today’s global audience is being inundated with powerful, emotionally charged images from Gaza, often presented without crucial context. We are witnessing a steady, almost hypnotic stream of content that portrays Israel as the singular cause of suffering, while the roles of Hamas as the governing power in Gaza, a designated terrorist group, and a key driver of the conflict; and Iran as the benefactor and driver of so much of the bloodshed and instability, is given little serious examination.

In this media and organizational environment, it is essential to approach reporting with critical scrutiny. Consider not just what is being reported, but who is reporting it, under what conditions, and whose interests are served by the version of events being presented. Misinformation in this context does more than obscure facts—it shapes public perception, fuels policy decisions, and ultimately impacts lives on the ground as we have seen through the stunning rise and normalization of antisemitism the world over.