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In a damning exposé by HonestReporting’s Rachel O’Donoghue, NBC News is under fire for what critics are calling a deliberate and disturbing editorial shift: rewriting its own previously accurate reporting on the Israel-Hamas war to fit a politically convenient anti-Israel narrative.
NBC’s Journalistic Integrity in Question
O'Donoghue's investigation reveals a chilling pattern. NBC isn’t just making mistakes—it’s retroactively altering facts it had already verified, erasing critical context and painting Israel as the aggressor while minimizing Hamas’s role as the initiator of war crimes and atrocities.
A glaring example? A recent NBC report casually claimed that Israel had unilaterally shattered a ceasefire with Hamas — a claim that starkly contradicts NBC’s own prior coverage just weeks earlier.
In March 2024, NBC accurately reported that the ceasefire had expired due to Hamas's refusal to move forward with the next phase of the deal — a phase that would have required the release of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the October 7 massacre.
On March 1, NBC’s headline read: “Gaza ceasefire in doubt”, citing stalled negotiations and emphasizing Israel’s willingness to extend the truce. While NBC curiously omitted Hamas's hostage stalling from the subheading, the article clearly identified the terrorist group’s obstinance.
But by April 17 — barely six weeks later — NBC had completely reversed the narrative. Its report claimed Israel had shattered the fragile truce, suggesting it was Jerusalem, not Hamas, that derailed peace efforts.
This Orwellian flip-flop did not go unnoticed. HonestReporting publicly flagged the editorial backpedaling. NBC responded with a quiet, unacknowledged amendment that vaguely acknowledged the ceasefire’s expiration. But even then, the underlying storyline remained twisted — placing disproportionate blame on Israel and sanitizing Hamas’s sabotage.
Revisionism Disguised as Reporting
NBC’s rebranding of factual history is not limited to ceasefire timelines. Over the past few months, the outlet has repeatedly used euphemistic language to describe terrorist organizations and those who support them.
A Case in Point: The “Misunderstood” Terror Apologists
One case that particularly outraged observers was NBC’s whitewashed reporting on Kneecap, an Irish band dropped by its U.S. agent — not for their “pro-Palestinian stance,” as NBC put it, but for publicly glorifying Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations under U.S. law.
NBC framed the decision as a crackdown on “anti-Israel messaging,” and gave Kneecap free PR by parroting their claim of being victims of a “coordinated smear campaign.”
What NBC conveniently left out? The fact that Kneecap is under criminal investigation in the UK for allegedly inciting political assassinations, and that their stage performances have included calls to violence and glorification of IRA-style terror. Their very name — Kneecap — is a not-so-subtle wink to the violent punishment tactics used by the Irish Republican Army.
This isn’t an isolated misstep. NBC previously had to issue a correction after referring to convicted Palestinian terrorists as “hostages” during earlier hostage-prisoner exchanges. Such repeated editorial failures suggest a pattern — not an accident.
Downplaying the October 7 Massacre
Perhaps the most grotesque rewrite in NBC’s coverage comes in how the network now characterizes the October 7, 2023 terror onslaught — the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
That morning, Hamas launched a premeditated, barbaric attack on Israeli civilians during an active ceasefire. They butchered families in their homes, executed concertgoers, raped women, and kidnapped over 240 people — including children and the elderly — to be used as bargaining chips.
Yet NBC now refers to this deliberate, grotesque slaughter as “a major escalation in a decades-long conflict.”
There was no escalation. There was no provocation. There was only a cold-blooded massacre, planned and carried out by terrorists while Israeli civilians were asleep in their beds.
NBC’s framing implies mutual blame — a grotesque false equivalence that effectively whitewashes the very event that reignited the war. Worse, by failing to identify Hamas as the instigator, NBC subtly legitimizes their narrative — one that continues to fuel antisemitic propaganda across global media.
Why This Matters
Media coverage doesn’t just inform — it shapes perception, policy, and public sentiment. When an influential network like NBC News engages in editorial gymnastics to invert the roles of victim and aggressor, it enables terrorism, emboldens extremists, and erodes the moral clarity the world desperately needs.
“If a news outlet can’t keep its own reporting straight — or worse, is willing to rewrite it to match a shifting narrative — why should anyone trust it?” asks O'Donoghue.
NBC’s pattern of distortion is more than journalistic malpractice — it’s an abdication of responsibility at a time when truth is under siege.
