Wire news agencies like Reuters, AFP cooperate with Hamas but don't face protests for it - opinion

Movies have the Oscars. Major League Baseball has an All-Star team.

Do you know when you’ve really made it big on the pro-Israel speaking circuit? When you’ve gotten heckled enough to be cited in a report by the Anti-Defamation League.

I got that honor in a 2011 ADL report on “Anti-Israel trends on college campuses” in a section on “attempts to silence the pro-Israel voice.”

But the adjective used to describe me was not one I would pick for myself as a proud carnivore.

“When a relatively pareve speaker like Gil Hoffman is getting heckled, the problem must be very serious,” the report said.

I’ve managed to stay out of trouble for the most part since then –but nowadays, anyone pro-Israel is automatically controversial. Last month, attempts were made to cancel my talk on “How to Avoid Media Bias in Your Middle East Reporting” to the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists.

The critics warned that my Zoom would “harm local Jewish and Palestinian communities,” falsely accusing us of being sponsored by AIPAC and saying I “lack the credibility and sensitivity required to serve our community’s needs.” Thankfully, the organization stood up to cancel culture, and the talk went well. The Jews and Palestinians of New Jersey seem to have emerged unscathed.

However, HonestReporting has brought about its share of casualties on the media battlefield in the current war. Six journalists from top media outlets were reassigned or let go after we revealed their antisemitic social media posts or connection to Hamas.

But our role as a watchdog has only made media outlets more careful to avoid bias and maintain professionalism as journalists.

THE LATEST proof of that came from none other than Maya Gebeily, Reuters’ Beirut-based bureau chief for Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Gebeily is currently responsible for coverage of the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah printed in global media outlets.

In a recent video interview with The Beirut Banyan podcast, she admitted that scrutiny by HonestReporting has made her team extra careful while reporting on Israel.

“We were operating – all journalists at the time and continue to be – in an environment... that is hyper-politicized,” she said. “We’ve seen from various organizations like HonestReporting and other watchdogs that basically look at Western media in particular and try to poke holes in the tweets, in the LinkedIn posts, in the stories of journalists and trying to accuse them of bias.”

Her words show that revealing the truth matters. We are holding them accountable – and ensure that they maintain the standards international journalists covering Israel don’t seem to keep enough unless they know they are being watched.

Exposing wire news services for bias regarding Hamas, Hezbollah

What upset Gebeily was our media critique of how Reuters investigated the killing of the agency’s journalist Issam Abdullah in south Lebanon. Killed covering cross-border fire near the Israel-Lebanon border on Oct. 13, Reuters’ probe minimized and whitewashed Hezbollah’s role in his death. While Hezbollah was mentioned only four times in Reuters’ investigative piece, a similar report on the killing of a Reuters photographer in Afghanistan mentioned the Taliban 41 times.

Gebeily’s kvetching about the monitoring of LinkedIn posts referred to another HonestReporting story about Reuters executive editor Simon Robinson, who posted a 7,500-word essay titled “The Shoah after Gaza,” which criticized Western media for being too pro-Israel.

While it came after Gebeily’s interview, we also revealed that scarves sporting terror group insignias had been decorating Reuters’ Gaza bureau office. The wire news agency disputed the report, even though it included a picture of the scarves at the office behind its head of visuals in Gaza, which he posted on Facebook.

Please help Reuters' Ethics and Standards department find the terror groups' scarves after they disputed that their journalists “decorate[d] their office with terror symbols.” Our updated story: https://t.co/EWkb3p6l5G pic.twitter.com/tArLk9JLyi

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 11, 2024

A final scoop of ours that unnerved Reuters found that journalists working for foreign media in Gaza participated in Hamas’s Day of Loyalty to the Palestinian Journalist, an annual event with the stated aim of aligning the media with Hamas’s agenda.

The exposure unveiled the disturbing relationship between Gaza’s rulers and the journalists tasked with covering them, calling into question their objectivity and the ethical standards of their media outlets – Reuters, the Associated Press, AFP, and The New York Times.

Two journalists were honored in the 2021 event as Hamas media office’s “work partners:” Yasser Qudih, who infiltrated into Israel on Oct. 7 and recently won the Pulitzer Prize with Reuters’ photography staff; and New York Times photographer Samar abu Elouf, who recently won the prestigious Polk Award.

All four of the media outlets vigorously defended their journalists who participated in Hamas’s loyalty events, noting that Gaza’s Government Media Office is in charge of accrediting journalists working there. “Samar, along with many other journalists working for international media outlets in Gaza, has attended events hosted by the GMO – the body that controls access, accreditation and the right to work in the territory,” The New York Times said. 

“These events took place in previous years and prior to the events of Oct. 7. All of the work that appears in the Times passes through multiple editors who assure that our standards for independence and fairness are met. We stand by Samar’s ethics and her work.”

THE RESPONSES of AP and AFP were especially revealing.

“The Associated Press continues to provide accurate, fact-based, nonpartisan coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, as it has since the war began,” the agency told Ynet. “These journalists were working in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Having to maintain working relationships with local authorities is standard practice for journalists, wherever they work. This does not indicate pledging loyalty to or expressing support for Hamas.”

AFP said that “in all these [global] locations [where our journalists work], it is incumbent on them to maintain cordial and professional relations with the organization that controls the territory in which they work.” Such responses basically acknowledge the conflicts of interest among their journalists. If they know there is a conflict, they should be transparent about it.

It should not have taken an investigative report by a media watchdog. They should inform their readers, who don’t realize that reporting from Hamas-controlled Gaza is different from what they read and see out of Israel and most of the rest of the world.

But at least they responded.

HonestReporting continues campaigning for accountability concerning journalists who did not face any disciplinary measures despite evidence of connections with Hamas and clear bias against Israel.

Palestinian journalist Abeer Ayyoub – who works for The Wall Street Journal and used her X account on Oct. 7 to spread terrorist propaganda and fake news – still regularly writes anti-Israel news articles for the newspaper that has a pro-Israel editorial line. CBS News did not even bother responding to revelations about its journalist in Gaza, Marwan al-Ghoul, who praised terrorists at an official Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine event and had contact with terrorists as a Gaza City municipal council member.

None of these guys are “relatively pareve.” But they aren’t facing protests that will get them cited in a report by the ADL.■

The writer is executive director of the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting. He served as chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years.