Gaza: Hamas humiliates and manipulates world media

It was a strange remark to make considering the above claims – and having regard to the following comment reportedly made by New York Times vice president for corporate communications Eileen Murphy that the newspaper's team in Gaza did not photograph any rocket launches, sent only "two very distant, poor quality images that were captioned Hamas fighters" and "hasn't even seen anyone carrying a gun."

Even more intriguing - Rudoren's deputy at the NYT - Isabel Kershner - was one of the FPA board members who approved the condemnatory statement. How could two colleagues from the same newspaper observing the same sequence of events come to such different conclusions?

British freelancer Harry Fear said he was asked to leave Gaza by three plainclothes Hamas officials at Al-Shifa Hospital - apparently for referring to rocket launches near his hotel. He reportedly said he did not feel any intimidation or interference.

Some reporters however reportedly received death threats. Sometimes, cameras were smashed. Reporters were prevented from filming anti-Hamas demonstrations where more than 20 Palestinians were shot dead by Hamas gunmen.

Evidence of Hamas controlling the flow of news is obvious in its failure to allow the media to:

1. independently determine, separate and verify the number of civilian and Hamas deaths

2. photograph any Hamas forces launching rockets from residential areas or civilians being used as human shields.

A BBC investigation has uncovered photos of dead children from earlier conflicts being passed off as casualties in the current conflict – being fed to gullible reporters to send around the World to even more gullible target audiences.

Why would reporters keep going back into Gaza to be so humiliated by Hamas?

They are certainly not reporting what is actually happening.

Maybe they should stay out of Gaza and let Hamas do its own media releases.

The media barons would certainly save a lot of money.