How Anti-Israel Falsehoods Go Viral – and Stay There

 For full article go to https://honestreporting.com/3-lies-in-1-week-how-anti-israel-falsehoods-go-viral-and-stay-there/

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 brainwashes public understanding of an entire conflict.

Within the span of a single week, all three organizations published or aired egregious, deeply consequential errors. Honest Reporting 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 fabrications, these mid-October errors offer indicate 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. Honest Reporting 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 terror  group.

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

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.

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. This is a fundamental failure to verify by ABC News.

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.

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, if they appear at all, are muted, delayed, and reach only a fraction of the audience. 

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 Honest Reporting 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.

Because if that week in October proved anything, it’s that misinformation about Israel isn’t by chance. It’s systemic. It’s influential.

And unless challenged, it becomes the story.