Gaza hospital confusion | Social media safety game

Major news organizations like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times were publicly criticized following coverage of an Oct. 17 blast at a Gaza hospital complex that killed at least 100 people and possibly hundreds more. Initial reports and news alerts conveyed statements from Palestinian officials who said the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike. But by the next day both newspapers updated their reporting with statements from U.S. and Israeli government officials who claimed to have evidence that Israel was not responsible for the explosion.

A Times spokesman said that during breaking news events “we report what we know as we learn it” and that as facts emerged, they continued reporting. This process was slowed by the fact that the site of the blast wasn’t accessible to journalists and by the amount of time it took Israeli officials to release their findings following the quick statement from the Palestinians. However, given the sensitive nature of the news, a Times editor’s note said “editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified.”

• Discuss: Why does wartime reporting present such a unique challenge for journalists? How are facts verified during a breaking news story? How should standards-based news organizations respond when a reporting mistake is made?
• Note: The Wall Street Journal released a video analysis of the explosion nearly a week after it happened. Deeper reporting like this takes extra time for journalists to gather and interpret.
• Resources:
  • “Practicing Quality Journalism” (NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom).
  • “The Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook” (WNYC Studios).
• Related:
  • “Why is it hard to figure out what’s actually happening in the Israel-Hamas war?” (J.D. Capelouto, Semafor).
  • “Fake accounts, old videos and rumors fuel chaos around Gaza hospital explosion” (Shannon Bond, NPR).
  • “After Hospital Blast, Headlines Shift With Changing Claims” (Katie Robertson, The New York Times).
  • “News outlets in fog of war amid dueling claims on Gaza hospital blast” (Oliver Darcy, CNN).

Dig Deeper: Use this think sheet to take notes on the challenges of reporting breaking news in war zones (meets NLP Standard 3).

Social media and messaging accounts sympathetic to Hamas are spreading extremist messages and violent imagery from the Palestinian militant group, despite a ban on Hamas content by major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter). Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, followers of a Hamas-linked Telegram account rose from 340,000 to about 1.3 million. As tech companies struggle to moderate false and extremist content, experts say accounts like these are taking advantage of the instability and attention to the region to spread their messaging.

In modern wartime, information is often shaped by social media. The Israeli government, for example, launched a global public relations campaign after the war began, using social media ads to build support.

• Discuss: What percent of your social media feed is made up of posts about the war? How often do you consider the differences between the primary purposes of these posts? How should major social media platforms make decisions about which people and organizations to ban?
• Resource: “InfoZones” (Checkology virtual classroom).
• Related:
  • “The Israel-Hamas war shows how social media has given up on facts” (Kali Hays, Insider).
  • “How social media abdicated responsibility for the news” (Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker).
  • “A New Report Documents How Easily Children Can Access Graphic Images of the War” (Tiffany Hsu, The New York Times).