Updates to my reporting on Gaza's health ministry and the American media
Despite acknowledging that the Palestinian health ministry has the right numbers, the media continues to cast it as a "Hamas-run" cutout.
In November last year, I noticed a new phrase that seemed to have come out of nowhere: “Hamas-run health ministry.” In all the previous rounds of conflict, I remembered seeing American media cite the “Palestinian health ministry in Gaza” without throwing in the Hamas label. So I ran the numbers for a Responsible Statecraft report. That intuition turned out to be correct:
I was also shocked to discover that the term “Hamas-run health ministry” only became common right after the Ahli hospital bombing on October 17. After Israel was accused of attacking a hospital, the Israeli army and the Biden administration began a campaign to cast Palestinian medical authorities as terrorist liars; English-language media ate it up.
Since then, major American news outlets have had have intense internal debates about how to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the U.S. government has grudgingly acknowledged that the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza is a reliable source of information on casualties. President Joe Biden himself privately regretted casting doubt on those statistics.
Today, I ran the numbers again. The recent news coverage turned out to be…even more slanted in favor of “Hamas-run health ministry.” Referring to the Palestinian medical authorities by their official name, which was everyone’s standard practice before the Ahli bombing, has become vanishingly rare.
The Associated Press, whose dictionary is considered the gold standard for English-language news outlets, seems to be a major reason for this change.
The official AP Stylebook does not contain a full entry for the Palestinian health ministry. (Before the current war, AP wires tended to say “Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.”) But I recently came across a note from an AP editor, published to a question-and-answer section of the AP website for online stylebook subscribers:
Hi! What is AP's preference for the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza? The ones I see most often include Hamas-run Health Ministry, Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, Gaza-based Ministry of Health, and Gaza-based Ministry of Health.
from Lake Bluff, Illinois on Nov. 12, 2023
We generally say it's the Hamas-run Health Ministry (no need to add in Gaza if it's clear in the context).
It appears to be the first time that the Associated Press has officially addressed the question in writing. Four days later, the wire service seemed to backtrack a little, although it still insisted that “Hamas-run” was the standard:
Has AP changed guidance on Hamas-run Health Ministry? I am seeing it in some current AP stories without the "Hamas-run" part.
Thanks!from Winchester, Massachusetts on Nov. 16, 2023
We generally use Hamas-run Health Ministry, but as you note, not always.
In addition to the semi-official AP guidance, the pro-Israel lobby also tends to hound anyone who cites Palestinian casualty reports without implying that they’re Hamas fabrications. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, a pro-Israel pressure group, brags about its ability to water down reports on Palestinian casualties, including with the Hamas label.
When U.S. defense secretary Lloyd Austin said last week that over 25,000 women and children have been killed in Gaza, the right-wing New York Post attacked him for “citing Hamas-dictated death tolls.” A spokesperson from the Department of Defense told the Post that the U.S. government “cannot independently verify these Gaza casualty figures.”
U.S. officials know very well that the Palestinian health ministry is the most accurate and precise source of information on whatever is happening inside Gaza’s hospitals. But because Biden decided to give Israel political cover early in the war, officials cannot cite the ministry’s information without having the Biden administration’s older statements thrown back at them.
The administration has walked itself into a political corner, at the expense of the truth.
