Western media outlets serve as a mouthpiece for Hamas, study finds
US and European media have unquestioningly adopted Hamas’ narrative on Gaza and often amplify the terror group’s false claims, a new study has found.
The report, published by the Network Contagion and Research Institute NCRI), noted how Western media consistently cite the “Gaza Ministry of Health” as their primary source. But the fact that the ministry is a Hamas entity doesn’t seem to spark concerns about political neutrality, nor do news outlets find it problematic that it has a track record of pushing disinformation.
“The Ministry has a proven and systematic history of lies, deceptions, duplicated data, and exaggerations which strain credulity of any nonpartisan observer,” said the NCRI.
Not only do news publications frequently use Hamas and its affiliates as their main sources, but most of the time they don’t disclose this in the headline—presenting the story as fact.
“Of the high-engagement news articles NCRI analyzed, Hamas-linked officials and organizations, such as the Gaza Health Ministry, were directly cited in headlines more than any other named source,” the reported explained. “In nearly three-quarters of those cases, it was not disclosed in the headline that the source was a Hamas affiliate. Every blame-casting headline targeted Israel or the GHF – while not a single one held Hamas responsible.”
The GHF narrative
Western media outlets have been especially committed to parroting Hamas’ disinformation campaign against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an organization established by the Trump administration in May to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza. The GHF, which has so far distributed over 92 million meals to Gazans, has proven more effective than UN-led operations. Aid distributed by the UN, which maintains close ties with Hamas, often finds itself in the hands of the terror group instead of civilians. It was also recently discovered that the UN is withholding 950 trucks containing roughly 2,400 tons of food in Gaza while accusing Israel of starving Gazans.
Hamas, in coordination with the UN, has therefore launched a smear campaign against the GHF that involves false reports of mass killings at aid sites carried out by the IDF in coordination with the GHF. American and European media are quick to report these stories as fact without waiting for verification.
“Within days of GHF’s first meal deliveries, it became the target of a deliberate narrative assault, driven less by verifiable facts than by the demands of a competing narrative,” the report states. “Reports and evidence of violence at aid sites began to surface, and international and U.S. media outlets, social media influencers, and NGOs started publishing articles that ascribed blame to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or GHF for intentional violence against civilians, war crimes, and complicity in the crime of genocide. The reports quickly condensed into viral headlines, but the claim that the IDF was systematically murdering civilians was usually sourced from Hamas-run ministries or anonymous accounts, and often unverified. Moreover, evidence that Hamas could be responsible for violence around aid sites – evidence provided by non-Hamas Palestinian sources, by Hamas’s online communications, and by video that in some cases shows Hamas operatives deliberately firing on Palestinian civilians– was almost never suggested.”
These headlines have fueled conspiracy theories against the GHF on social media, such as its participation in drug trafficking operations. They also drum up support for Hamas while undermining the United States. Using an AI language learning model (LLM), the NCRI randomly selected five high-engagement news articles related to the GHF and found that they created a 70% drop in blame for Hamas violence near aid sites, a 38% drop in support for US aid efforts, and a 10% drop in trust in American sources of information related to humanitarian aid.
Left-wing violence and ‘Fake MAGA’
The media’s amplification of Hamas narratives has led to violence on the Left and is further boosted by false Right-wing influencers.
“In an NCRI experiment (n=1,676), exposure to a retracted starvation headline significantly increased the warped moral perception that Israel is an evil and genocidal actor,” the NCRI report said. “That same retracted headline was cited in the manifesto of Elias Rodriguez, a left-wing extremist who killed two civilians in Washington, D.C. The narrative has since been co-opted and amplified by the Fake MAGA network – an ecosystem of anti-establishment influencers pushing Kremlin- and Tehran-aligned disinformation.”
In June, for example, the Trump-supporting influencer Texas Patriot was discovered to be a Muslim user based in Pakistan. He has since deleted his account.
