With the fighting between Israel and Hamas halted – for now – it’s important to look at the role media played aiding Palestinian terrorists. Network news shows embraced a new narrative – moral equivalency. Hamas and Israel were treated as equals. Reporters and anchors almost never called Israel’s enemy Hamas a “terrorist” organization.
ABC, CBS and NBC journalists referred to Hamas as “militants,” “fighters” or “soldiers” 13 times more often than they called them “terrorists.” (65 stories to 5 stories.) All three networks were almost equally bad – ranging in coverage from 12-to-1 to 15-to-1, calling Hamas militants/fighters/soldiers vs. terrorists.