Brit Hume: Gaza hospital explosion was another media fiasco
FOX News chief political analyst Brit Hume weighs in on the medias coverage of an explosion at a Gaza hospital.
Much of the legacy media has egg on its face for allowing the Hamas-backed Gaza Health Ministry to set the initial framing when covering an explosion that occurred at a Gaza hospital earlier this week. Many news organizations that were quick to repeat Hamas’ claim that Israel was at fault have since walked it back, but watchdogs believe it was a "terrible mistake" with lasting consequences.
The Israel Defense Force determined the blast was caused by a rocket misfire launched by Islamic Jihad, another terrorist organization active in Gaza. President Biden, based on evidence from the IDF and U.S. intelligence, has publicly said Israel was not to blame. But that hasn’t stopped protests around the world from people who still believe Hamas talking points that were published by major media outlets.
Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume called it a "media fiasco" and scolded news organizations that echoed Hamas propaganda without skepticism.
An IDF spokesperson blasted the media for believing the Hamas’ claim that Israel was responsible for the explosion that rocked the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday. (DAWOOD NEMER/AFP via Getty Images)
"Look, any story on this would properly report what the Palestinians were saying. But they would also be informed, I would think, of the fact that the Palestinian health authority or whatever the organization is called that put out this original claim that Israel was responsible, is governed by Hamas," Hume said Wednesday on "Special Report."
"So, this is what the terrorists are saying about an alleged terror attack from Israel. So… you treat it with great skepticism. That, alas, is not what happened in far too many corners of the media and western media in general. There were huge headlines, yes, they all said this is what the Palestinians were saying. But that gave you the impression that this is what some innocent Palestinians caught up in all of this were saying. That’s not the case," Hume continued.
Hume pointed out that Hamas committed "one of the most hideous atrocities that we have seen in a very long time" on Oct. 7.
"The idea that you would parrot propaganda from that source, as if it were legitimate… without great skepticism, seems to me is a terrible mistake," he said.
The New York Post published a scathing opinion piece by Isaac Schorr headlined, "Media parrots Hamas’ lie without question — and Jews suffer for it," which further condemned the press’ actions.
"It is no exaggeration to say the media breathlessly amplified a terrorist organization’s blood libel against the Jewish people Tuesday, less than a week and a half after that same terrorist organization carried out the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust," Schorr wrote.
"Everyone, especially the reporters responsible for Tuesday’s deluge of misinformation, knows there’s no independent health ministry operating in Gaza; every piece of information coming from official channels in Gaza is curated or fabricated by Hamas," he continued.
The Post opinion piece explained that "the media should obviously not be amplifying the claims of terrorists" and "if the press insists on using these sources, it must not conceal them from the public."
"Laundering Hamas’ lies with weasel words like ‘government in Gaza’ or by referring to innocuous-sounding ‘health authorities’ isn’t exonerating — it’s an even more damning indictment of those who engaged in this thinly veiled propaganda campaign," Schorr wrote, adding, "This constitutes one of the most flagrant and consequential failures of the American press in decades, and the full measure of its repercussions will likely not be known for years to come."
Former CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter said prominent newsrooms made an "atrocious series of mistakes" when covering the explosion.
Free Beacon media reporter Drew Holden posted a comprehensive list of "outlets who carried water for a terrorist group to smear Israel" by rushing to parrot claims of the Hamas-backed health ministry before facts came out. The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, BBC, PBS and The Daily Beast were among the outlets called out by Holden.
"Remember, the outlets who pushed this Hamas lie are the same ones who have spent years shouting that the greatest threat society faces is disinformation," Holden wrote.
BIDEN SAYS ISRAEL NOT TO BLAME FOR GAZA HOSPITAL BLAST, CITES DATA 'SHOWN BY MY DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'
NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham doesn’t expect culpable media organizations to explain what happened anytime soon.
"The ‘prestige media’ that lecture everyone else about being patsies for disinformation ought to be humbler and more apologetic about how they report on ‘mass casualty’ events that have the potential to cause global unrest," Graham told Fox News Digital. "No one expects CNN or AP or Reuters -- who all blamed Israel at the drop of their pens -- to put their own ‘fact checkers’ on the case and explain how wrong they were."
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann initially posted on social media that President Biden "cannot in good conscience go to Israel" following the "Israeli strike" on the hospital, but eventually deleted the post and apologized.
"Given the IDF denial on this, its insistence the explosion resulted from Hamas weapons, and in the absence of independent verification either way, I retract and delete this tweet without reservation and with my apology for concluding before conclusions should have been made," Olbermann wrote.
While Olbermann apologized, others have continued to push the narrative that Israel was at fault. The "CBS Evening News" was roasted Wednesday night for a social media post that focused on a doctor who insisted Israel's army had previously warned the facility to evacuate.
The quickly ridiculed CBS post accompanied a video in which a Gaza woman said they got "bombed," and the CBS News reporter put an emphasis on Palestinian claims that an Israeli rocket previously struck the hospital.
"CBS Evening News" was roasted Wednesday night for a social media post that suggested Israel was to blame for the explosion that rocked the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City despite President Biden and the Israeli government saying otherwise. (Twitter/Screenshot)
IDF Spokesperson Jonathan Conricus posted a video "debunking Hamas fake news" that meticulously broke down what the media got wrong.
"When there was an explosion at the hospital in Northern Gaza, reports came out and almost immediately many international media outlets were very quick to adopt the Hamas narrative, use Hamas language and claims, and immediately blame Israel," Conricus said.
"As time went by, reality was different from this," Conricus said while pointing to a screen showing headlines from prominent news organizations. "What I will show you now is how we understood that this was a fake."
Conricus then laid out significant evidence that indicated the explosion was actually caused by a rocket misfire launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including multiple pieces of footage including a thermal view that failed to show the body count alleged by Hamas. The IDF spokesperson also compared the aftermath of Israeli bombs to Hamas rockets, noting that damage to the hospital parking lot mirrored the rockets and that an Israeli bomb would have done significantly more damage.
"I find it sad that so many distinguished, respectable media institutions in the world were so fast and so trigger happy to report what Hamas was saying, and didn’t wait for confirmation," Conricus said.
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The New York Times defended its coverage to Fox News Digital.
"During any breaking news event, we report what we know as we learn it. We apply rigor and care to what we publish, explicitly citing sources and noting when a piece of news is breaking and likely to be updated. And as the facts on the ground become more clear, we continue reporting. Our extensive and continued reporting on the hospital in Gaza makes explicit the murkiness surrounding the events there," a Times spokesperson said.
A Reuters spokesperson told Fox News Digital, "It is standard practice for Reuters to publish statements and claims made by sources about news in the public interest, while simultaneously working to verify and seek information from every side. We make it clear to our readers that these are ‘claims’ made by a source, rather than facts reported by Reuters. In the specific instance of the fast-breaking news about the attack on the hospital in Gaza, we added precise details and attribution to our stories as quickly as we could.
"Reuters is committed to continuing to cover the Israel-Hamas conflict with independence, integrity and freedom from bias, in keeping with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles."
The Associated Press, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, BBC, PBS and The Daily Beast did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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