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Key takeaways:

• Major outlets made serious, high-impact mistakes. CNN, ABC, and the BBC each aired major errors in the same week.
• These aren’t one-offs – they reveal a deeper pattern. All three incidents reflect the same problem: rushed, skewed, and unverified reporting about Israel.
• The misinformation has accumulated while corrections rarely reach the same audience. Two years of misleading coverage have shaped global opinion far more than the fixes ever will.

By Rachel O’Donoghue (Honest Reporting) 

 

CNN, ABC News, and the BBC.

Three of the largest and most influential news organizations in the world – with a combined reach in the hundreds of millions across television, radio, and digital platforms – and a responsibility to match.

When outlets of that size make mistakes, it doesn’t just distort a single news cycle; it reshapes public understanding of an entire conflict.

That is particularly important to remember now. As the mid-October ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began and the first Israeli hostages were returned after two years in underground captivity, global attention was high – and accuracy mattered more than ever.

Yet within the span of a single week, all three organizations published or aired egregious, deeply consequential errors. Each was different in style, but together they revealed the same pattern HonestReporting has exposed throughout the war: misinformation travels at full speed, while corrections limp in far too late – if they actually arrive at all.

This is not an isolated problem. It is a cumulative one.

After two years of audiences being bombarded with misleading reports, mistranslations, euphemisms, and outright fabrications, these mid-October errors offer a snapshot of the damage done – and why media accountability remains essential.

The Three Mistakes – and What They Reveal

1. CNN: Amanpour Makes Light of Hostage Torture

On October 13, CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour claimed Israeli hostages had “probably been treated better than the average Gazan,” describing them as “pawns” Hamas had an incentive to care for.

HonestReporting exposed the comment, prompting widespread outrage.

Amanpour later issued an on-air apology, admitting her remarks were “insensitive and wrong” after learning the hostages had reported being starved, electrocuted, held in chains and cages underground, forbidden from crying, and forced to dig their own graves.

This was not a slip of the tongue. It was a worldview – one that reflexively downplays Israeli suffering even in moments where facts should be indisputable.

 

2. ABC News: Terrorist Given a Hero’s Edit

That same week, ABC News aired footage presenting a Hamas operative as a heroic rescuer during the ceasefire, without identifying him as a member of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

HonestReporting revealed the man’s affiliations and role in Hamas terrorism. ABC has not used him in any subsequent reporting.

Sources tell us this story was filed outside ABC News’ normal editorial process and was produced solely by a Gaza-based cameraman – with no ABC reporter involved. After two years of Hamas-aligned “content creators” posing as independent journalists, it is difficult to overstate the irresponsibility of airing such footage without rigorous verification.

This was more than a lapse in judgment. It was a breakdown in due diligence: allowing material sourced entirely inside Hamas-controlled territory to transform a terrorist into a supposed rescuer – and broadcasting it to millions. It reflected a fundamental failure of verification by ABC News.

1/
Here’s Mahmoud Bassal, coordinating the recovery of bodies from under the rubble in Gaza, according to @ABC.

Hero? Humanitarian?

Or Hamas operative? 🧵 https://t.co/XwC8W4C9Zb pic.twitter.com/Rwhg7u7tJF

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 19, 2025

3. BBC News: Calling Prisoner Releases a “Hostage Exchange”

Also on October 13, the BBC described the release of Israeli hostages – kidnapped civilians held underground for two years – as part of a “hostage exchange” with Palestinian prisoners.

This false equivalence has become a persistent media trope, flattening the distinction between abducting civilians and incarcerating individuals accused and convicted of violent crimes.

The BBC did not issue a clarification. Instead, the journalist who wrote it later insisted the phrasing was not meant to equate Israeli hostages with Palestinian prisoners.

 

Related Reading: Did Popular NPR Podcast Break Its Own Journalistic Standards?

The Truth These Three Incidents Reveal

These three errors did not happen in a vacuum.

They are part of the same ecosystem of misreporting that has shaped public perception since October 7, 2023. In the fog of war – and the political pressure that follows – legacy news organizations have repeatedly rushed out unverified claims, adopted activist language, platformed extremists, and framed Israeli self-defense as aggression.

Corrections, when they appear at all, are muted, delayed, and reach only a fraction of the audience who absorbed the original claim.

The result?

Two years of global opinion shaped not by facts, but by a steady stream of skewed, inaccurate, and sometimes, outright false reporting. The mid-October ceasefire week is not an outlier but a case study, a compressed timeline showing just how quickly anti-Israel misinformation can spread, embed, and harden into “truth.”

And if three such egregious mistakes can appear in a single week – from three of the world’s most influential newsrooms – it gives a sense of what HonestReporting has been up against for the past two years. This is the scale of the problem: tens of millions of people encountering distortions in real time, while corrections – if they appear at all – arrive quietly, too late to matter.

That is why our work cannot stop at fact-checking. HonestReporting is increasingly focused on media literacy: teaching audiences how to recognize misframing, emotional manipulation, activist language, and factual sleight-of-hand. And it is why we are now engaged in the hard but essential work of restoring Israel’s image after two years of relentless misrepresentation – showing readers, viewers, and policymakers what actually happened, and why accuracy matters.

Because if that week in October proved anything, it’s that misinformation about Israel isn’t occasional.

It’s systemic.

It’s influential.

And unless challenged, it becomes the story.