Media Parrots Hamas’ Death Toll Lies — Shows No Interest in Fact-Checking or Accountability

The war in Gaza resumed last week, after Hamas rejected a ceasefire extension that would have required it to release the remaining Israeli hostages — half of whom are now believed to be dead. In response, Israel carried out targeted airstrikes.

Meanwhile, the Iranian regime’s other terror proxy, the Houthis, joined the assault — launching a ballistic missile from Yemen as Hamas also fired rockets from Gaza. The Houthi strike sent hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians scrambling for shelter early Sunday morning.

On March 18, the Israeli Air Force eliminated multiple senior Hamas leaders, including the head of its interior ministry and the operations chief of its internal security arm. These were significant, surgical hits.

Because these were the IDF’s first major operation since January’s temporary ceasefire, the strikes were bound to make headlines. What’s troubling, however, is how swiftly the media reverted to old habits — once again parroting Hamas’ death tolls without a trace of skepticism or context.

It was a grim rerun of October 2023’s Al-Ahli Hospital debacle, where major news outlets rushed to blame Israel for a blast — later proven to be a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket — that struck a hospital parking lot, not the hospital itself, and killed a fraction of the “500” initially claimed. But Hamas knew it didn’t need facts — it could count on compliant journalists to amplify the lie.

And here we are again.

On Tuesday, headlines across The New York Times, CNN, AP, BBC, The Guardian, TIME, and others all regurgitated the same line: “More than 400 people killed, mostly women and children, in Gaza’s deadliest day since November 7.”

Their source? “Gaza’s Health Ministry.”

A few outlets mumbled, almost apologetically, that this “ministry” is run by Hamas. Even fewer explained that Hamas doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Airstrikes were carried out to target senior Hamas leaders—yet major outlets led with casualty claims from Hamas, without even naming them as the source. When the media erases Hamas’ responsibility and hides their role in this war, they’re not reporting—they’re protecting. pic.twitter.com/pPoxzrtUuH

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) March 21, 2025

CNN and others even quoted the Palestinian UN envoy, Dr. Riyad Mansour, as he lamented the bloodshed during the “holy month of Ramadan,” insisting that “no one would fight during Ramadan” in his tradition.

Evidently, it’s a fairly recent tradition, given that Hamas launched a barrage of rockets at Israeli cities on May 10, 2021 — squarely during Ramadan, just two days before the month ended.

Gaza’s “Health Ministry” is also the sole source behind this week’s new wave of headlines portraying apocalyptic scenes of carnage, with the death toll reportedly surging past 50,000.

Many anti-Israel biases of the Gaza fatality story are encapsulated in this article citing 50,000 killed. This is willful ignorance on the part of CNN and these journalists. Here is a review of how this article is a gross misrepresentation on many levels: 1/ pic.twitter.com/zAGK5F7eIj

— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) March 23, 2025

Once again, CNN led the pack in conferring legitimacy on Hamas’ numbers, describing the figure as a “grim milestone for a war with no end in sight, as Israel resumes fighting and warns of even tougher days ahead.”

Perhaps anticipating some readers might not take the Hamas-run ministry’s claims at face value, CNN turned to that other unimpeachable source of clarity on Israel — the United Nations. According to the UN, “the majority of deaths are women and children,” though “the true toll could be much higher, with many thousands believed to still be under the rubble.”

Some outlets didn’t even bother attributing the figure to Hamas’ health ministry, as a glance at Google’s top stories reveals headlines painting Israel as recklessly escalating an “expanded offensive,” with little context beyond the suggestion of malice or collective punishment.

The media, once again, appears to have learned nothing. If the Al-Ahli debacle offered any lessons, the breathless, copy-paste coverage of the past week showed they were quickly forgotten.

Some reminders for the journalists whose standards have slipped:

• The Hamas-run health ministry’s casualty counts have been repeatedly exposed as inflated and manipulated. A recent analysis by the Henry Jackson Society found male combatants were misclassified as women and children to skew the ratio.
• Claims that a “majority” of those killed are women and children have been debunked repeatedly.
• Israel continues to drop leaflets, send texts, and urge civilians to evacuate targeted zones. Hamas, meanwhile, orders civilians to stay put — so their deaths can be leveraged as propaganda — while its leaders flee to underground bunkers.

So yes, the war has resumed — and with it, the media’s war on accuracy. Although to be fair, it’s not clear they ever observed a ceasefire to begin with.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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