CBS News Caught Copying and Pasting Hamas Press Release into Article on Gaza War
With no correction, note, or admission, US news outlet quietly scrubbed the line that read: “The death toll of the Israeli aggression has risen to 50,609 martyrs.”
UNITED WITH ISRAEL 3:00 AM
A recent CBS News story exposed a troubling lapse in journalistic integrity, revealing how a major American outlet published what essentially amounted to a press release from a designated terrorist organization.
The article, posted earlier this month, covered an alleged Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school, with a headline that read: “Israeli strike on Gaza school allegedly kills 31 Palestinians, many kids, but IDF says it hit Hamas.” The framing immediately raised concerns: a precise death toll, a focus on child casualties, and skepticism toward the IDF’s explanation, all while portraying Israel as recklessly targeting civilians rather than Hamas.
CBS sourced its death toll from Gaza’s “Civil Defense rescue agency,” which cited Al-Ahli Hospital records. Yet, shortly after the report, Al-Ahli Hospital was exposed as housing a Hamas operations center, casting serious doubt on the reliability of its records. Despite this, CBS did not question the data from a Hamas-controlled war zone or consider Hamas’ documented tactic of embedding command centers in civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals.
Instead, the outlet challenged the IDF’s account, noting that the IDF had issued similar warnings a day earlier about another Hamas site. CBS seemed to find it implausible that a terror group ruling Gaza for nearly two decades would operate multiple military facilities within civilian areas—a strategy well-documented through tunnel networks, human shields, and base duplication.
The most damning evidence came in a line CBS later removed without acknowledgment: “The death toll of the Israeli aggression has risen to 50,609 martyrs.” The terms “martyrs” and “Israeli aggression” were lifted directly from Hamas propaganda, presented without attribution or context as if they were factual. This wasn’t a subtle bias—it was a blatant reproduction of Hamas’ narrative, funneled into a news story under CBS’s banner of credibility.
This incident reflects a broader pattern of distorted coverage in the Israel-Hamas conflict. Outlets like UPI, the BBC, The Guardian, and NPR have been documented by groups like HonestReporting for routinely quoting Hamas officials—whether press officers or “health ministry” representatives—as if they were impartial sources, despite Hamas being a proscribed terrorist organization. Such practices allow Hamas’ narrative, marked by inflated death tolls and victimhood, to permeate Western media, shaping public perception far beyond Gaza.
When a prestigious outlet like CBS parrots the language of a banned group without scrutiny, it’s more than an editorial oversight—it’s complicity. This kind of reporting undermines journalistic standards and amplifies the propaganda of a terrorist organization, blurring the line between fact and manipulation in a conflict already rife with misinformation.
Image - Reuters
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