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Media Coverage of Hostage Release Was Shameful — But Three Outlets Disgraced Themselves
Released hostage Or Levy, Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, February 8, 2025. Photo: Haim Zach/GPO/Handout via REUTERS
On Saturday, there was no way for the masked terrorists — green headbands wrapped around their anonymous faces — even to attempt hiding the hideous abuses they had inflicted on their captives. No showy stage parade could distract the world from what was plainly visible: three Israeli civilians, violently abducted from their homes, now bearing the marks of 16 months of unspeakable torture.
As the families of Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami watched live footage of their release, the initial flood of relief quickly gave way to shock and agony. Their loved ones were unrecognizable. It was a horrific sight.
We have criticized the media’s coverage of these hostage releases from the very beginning. Sometimes, it’s sheer sloppiness —misleading terminology, factual errors, like outlets falsely referring to kidnapped Israeli civilians as “soldiers.”
Other times, it’s far more insidious: a grotesque imbalance, an eagerness to humanize Palestinian prisoners — most of them convicted of violent, deadly attacks against Israelis — while downplaying the suffering of Israeli hostages.
But even by these dismal standards, Saturday’s coverage of the hostage-prisoner exchange was a new low.
And a few media organizations in particular, deserve special condemnation: the BBC, CNN, and The Guardian.
The coverage of Saturday’s events does not deserve to be classed as news. The reporters who wrote these pieces and the editors who approved them are not journalists in any meaningful sense of the word. And their readers and viewers should know the sheer contempt these media organizations have for them.
The BBC’s reporting marked a new nadir for the taxpayer-funded British broadcaster, with its live news coverage stating there were “concerns over appearance of hostages on both sides.”
“Concerns over appearance of hostages on both sides” — @BBCNews.
There are no “both sides” here.
What a disgusting false moral equivalence between actual Israeli hostages held by Hamas & Palestinian prisoners jailed for terror offenses.
It’s the BBC. Why aren’t we surprised? pic.twitter.com/FbCUZTk7mC
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 9, 2025
Yes, the publicly funded BBC referred to convicted terrorists, imprisoned for murder, as “hostages,” equating them with innocent civilians kidnapped by Hamas — a UK-proscribed terror group. And as for those “concerns over appearances”? That was how the BBC summarized the horror of seeing three innocent men tortured and starved for over a year, likening them to Palestinian terrorists who are fed, housed, and in no danger of being dragged from their cells in the middle of the night to be executed.
The BBC’s website coverage was no better. For hours, its live news homepage featured a celebratory image of Palestinian prisoners embracing their families, while the release of the emaciated hostages was relegated to the second half of the headline — deemed unworthy of the lead photo.
This wasn’t sloppy journalism. This was an editorial choice.
The @BBCWorld homepage. The haunting images of starved Israeli hostages? Nowhere to be seen.
But a front-page moment for convicted murderers embracing their families.
Sickening. pic.twitter.com/H6hz7brzk4
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 8, 2025
CNN’s coverage of the hostage handover also led with grotesque attempts to equate hostages and prisoners, with its lead story claiming that “many of [the prisoners] appeared emaciated and in poor health” — a statement that contradicts even the Palestinians’ own unsubstantiated claim that seven of the 183 prisoners were “transferred to hospital” upon release.
Meanwhile, The Guardian described the Palestinian prisoners and the starved Israeli hostages as “gaunt captives” in a headline that amounts to journalistic depravity.
The @guardian’s latest disgrace: equating Israeli hostages starved in Hamas captivity with convicted Palestinian terrorists who were never deprived of food.
This is journalistic moral rot. pic.twitter.com/esRi2g4nUe
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 9, 2025
And yet, these are just three of the worst offenders — singled out because their coverage so clearly exposed just how deep the media rot has set. Western media outlets are quite literally adopting the language of Islamist terror groups, describing Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives as “hostages” and “captives,” making excuses, and acting as apologists for the same terrorists who starved these three innocent men after kidnapping them. They then have the audacity to draw morally repugnant comparisons to legitimately imprisoned criminals.
Too many journalists looked at images that echoed the Nazi Holocaust — and seemed entirely unaffected. Instead of doing their jobs and reporting the plain truth, they reached for language that softened the horror, describing the hostages as merely “gaunt” and “weakened,” “pale” and “thin” — glossing over their final torturous humiliation on stage.
The three released Israeli hostages weren’t just “gaunt” as @Reuters claims. It’s far worse and shouldn’t have shocked only Israelis.
And what’s also worse? It wasn’t “dozens” of Palestinians freed. It was 183, including 18 serving life sentences for deadly attacks on Israelis. pic.twitter.com/p1GbaZhpL5
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 9, 2025
On Saturday evening, Israel’s Government Press Office issued a statement condemning the media’s attempts to “establish a comparison and/or symmetry” between the hostages and the legitimately imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, calling it a narrative that “runs contrary to every ethical standard of journalism.”
The three outlets singled out here showed a total disregard for journalistic standards and, worse, for basic human decency. Their coverage wasn’t just biased. It was a moral disgrace.
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.
The post Media Coverage of Hostage Release Was Shameful — But Three Outlets Disgraced Themselves first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.