Hamas By Any Other Name: The Media’s Masterclass on Biased Sources

News consumers don’t often get a free masterclass in how not to tell a story. But that’s precisely what The Independent did when it failed to mention Hamas even once in its report on Gaza.

The story — published without a Gaza dateline by the paper’s senior Asia correspondent — relied on multiple sources that sound neutral but are in fact affiliated with Hamas, and made it seem like Israel wages a war against Gaza, not against the terrorists.

Not a single mention of Hamas in a story that cites multiple sources to back up its claims against Israel.

So let’s see who @Independent‘s senior reporter @Maroosha_M relies on for her information.  pic.twitter.com/PeS3Mqznrb

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 2, 2025

Biased Sources

When it’s impossible to get professional reporters on the ground in Gaza, journalists should be extra careful with the sources they use.

But Maroosha Muzaffar, The Independent’s Senior Reporter in Asia, did the exact opposite — either out of bias or ignorance.

Here are the sources she relied upon to report on casualties of overnight Israeli airstrikes, as well as the current situation in the enclave:

• Shehab News Agency and the Palestinian Information Center — both affiliated with Hamas. The former was blocked by Facebook in 2021 for promoting violence.
• Al Jazeera — The Qatari mouthpiece, which even the Palestinian Authority banned recently over its support for terrorists.
• The Gaza Health Ministry — A Hamas-run body.
• The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics — A Ramallah-based institute that receives its data from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

None of these affiliations are clarified in The Independent’s report. And a short Israeli response about evacuation notices to civilians before the strikes is mentioned only in the sixth paragraph.

So readers are bombarded by what appears to be damning information against Israel from various independent and neutral sources, all associated with Hamas, which isn’t mentioned at all.

Biased Terminology

The omission of Hamas is also amplified by the story’s biased terminology. Twice, readers encounter the term “Israel’s war on Gaza,” as if Israel’s aim is to wipe out innocent Palestinians in the enclave.

In contrast, the term “Palestinians” or “Gazans” is mentioned only in the context of displacement or tragic death.

Israel is even subtly blamed for the suffering of Gazans due to bad weather conditions; the paragraph which describes their plight is juxtaposed to the paragraph about “Israel’s war on Gaza.”

And the final two paragraphs — which should usually be dedicated to providing necessary background such as Hamas’ October 7 attack that ignited the war — parrot unverified statistical claims about population decline in Gaza, which (as mentioned above) give a platform to Hamas’ narrative against Israel.

Why did the paper erase Hamas from the story? Did the reporter or her editors know that their sources are nothing but Hamas fronts? And why was Israel’s response buried, with no mention of its stated goal to eliminate the genocidal terror group?

Whether it’s ignorance or bias — the result is the same: A story about unprovoked Israeli aggression against helpless Gazans.

A masterclass in bad journalism, at best, or deliberate distortion, at worst.

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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