Hamas Controls the Headlines. A Former AP Reporter Explains How

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“The Story Itself Is Fake”: Former Associated Press Journalist Exposes The Media's Complicity With Hamas.
 

“Instead of covering the circus, the reporters became dancing bears in the circus.” — Matti Friedman

In a charged conversation at the 2025 AJC Global Forum in New York this past April, veteran journalist and former Associated Press (AP) correspondent Matti Friedman issued a sobering warning: the Western media is not reporting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — it’s helping to construct it. And worse, he says, it's doing so under the ideological direction of Hamas.

Friedman, who served at the AP's Jerusalem bureau from 2006 to 2011, first spoke out in 2014 about what he witnessed. But in light of the October 7 Hamas massacre and its aftermath, he returned to the conversation with more urgency — and evidence — that journalism has been weaponized against Israel, truth, and democratic societies themselves.

Disproportionate Coverage: “It just doesn’t make any sense”

Friedman began by recalling his realization that the scale of Israel coverage was completely irrational.

“At the time that I was at the AP… we had about 40 full time staffers covering Israel,” he said. “As a percentage of the world's surface, Israel is 1/100 of 1%... as a percentage of the land mass of the Arab world, Israel is 0.2%. And we had 40 people covering it.”

By comparison, he explained, that was more reporters than the AP had assigned to cover China, India, or the entirety of Sub-Saharan Africa.

“If the news is meant to be a rational analysis of events on planet Earth, you cannot cover Israel more than you cover the continent of Africa,” he said. “It just doesn't make any sense.”

The False Frame: “There isn’t an Israeli-Palestinian conflict”

Friedman challenged one of the most entrenched narratives in media and diplomacy: that there is a defined, two-party “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“There isn't an Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he stated bluntly. “Most of Israel's wars have not been fought against Palestinians… Israel’s most important enemy at the moment is Iran.”

If one tracked the trajectory of missiles fired at Israel over the past year, he said, “you’d see rockets being fired from Iraq and from Yemen and from Lebanon and from Gaza and from Iran. You’d see the contours of a regional conflict.”

By reducing this broader war into a parable of Israelis and Palestinians, the press strips the situation of its complexity — and in doing so, makes Israel “the bad guy in the story,” he explained.

Truth Suppressed: “The story had to be made to go away”

In a moment that drew audible gasps from the audience, Friedman revealed how the AP buried major news in 2008: a generous peace offer made by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the Palestinian Authority.

“Our reporters knew about this, and they’d seen a map of the offer,” Friedman said. “The two reporters who had the story were ordered to drop it. They were not allowed to cover the story.”

Why? Because it “would have made the Israelis who we were trying to villainize and demonize… seem like they were trying to solve the conflict on reasonable lines.”

“It was true,” he said, “but it would have helped the wrong people. And that question — ‘Who does this serve?’ — has destroyed… much of what used to be mainstream news coverage.”

Hamas and the Press: “We were threatened”

Perhaps the most chilling revelation was Friedman’s account of how Hamas directly censors Gaza reporting — and how Western media complies.

“As far as I know, I was the first staffer to erase information from the story because we were threatened by Hamas,” he said, describing a 2008 incident during a war in Gaza.

A Palestinian reporter revealed that Hamas fighters were disguising themselves as civilians — a detail that made it into the story.

But, Friedman recalled, “a few hours later, it was clear that someone had spoken to him… he said, ‘Matti, you have to take that detail out of the story.’”

Friedman complied, then suggested the AP include a note to explain they were removing it under Hamas censorship.

“I was overruled,” he said. “From that point in time, the AP, like all of its sister organizations, collaborates with Hamas censorship in Gaza.”

This means the story coming out of Gaza is shaped by Hamas operatives, sympathizers, or terrified stringers — not Western journalists. “All of the reporters in Gaza are Palestinians,” Friedman noted. “Some of them identify with Hamas. Some of them are intimidated by Hamas… and the third category is people who actually belong to Hamas.”

Yet the media continues to quote casualty figures and battlefield assessments from the Hamas-run “Gaza Health Ministry” as fact.

October 7: The Narrative “Snaps Back”

Friedman noted that for a brief moment following October 7, the press couldn’t ignore Israeli suffering.

“You’re not supposed to sympathize with Israelis,” he said. “But… the nature of the atrocities were so heinous that they could not be ignored.”

However, the discomfort in the press corps was palpable. “You knew that within a few weeks, maybe a month, it was gonna snap back at the first opportunity.”

That snapback came with the false Al-Ahli Hospital story — a claim that Israel had bombed a hospital and killed 500 people, later debunked by evidence showing a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket caused the explosion.

Still, the damage was done. “Then… the story really becomes the same old story, which is a story of Israel victimizing Palestinians for no reason.”

The Broader Crisis: “A symptom of something much bigger”

Friedman warned that this isn’t just about Israel — it’s about how liberal institutions in the West are being hollowed out by ideology.

“My problems in the AP bureau 15 years ago were really… a canary in the coal mine,” he said. “The transformation of the important liberal institutions of the West into kind of activist arms of a very radical ideology…”

He cited universities, NGOs, and major newsrooms — “they still have the logo, they still have the name, but they serve a different purpose.”

What Can Be Done?

When asked how to reverse this trend, Friedman was unsparing in his realism: “The institutions can’t be saved.”

“Writing a letter to the editor of the New York Times is not going to help,” he said. “It’s not about knowing or not knowing… they define the profession differently.”

Instead, he turned inward: the fight, he insisted, must be for Jewish resilience and continuity, not external approval.

“If I had unlimited resources,” he said, “I would make sure that young Jewish people have access to the riches of Jewish civilization… I would institute a program that would allow any young Jewish person to be fluent in Hebrew by the time they finish college.”

“Hebrew is the key to Jewish life… and it’s not one that antisemites can interfere with.”

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