In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 massacre (when more than 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered in the most brutal attack on Jews since the Holocaust) New Zealand’s media initially responded with what appeared to be moral clarity. The scale and savagery of the atrocities were so staggering, so well-documented, that it seemed, for once, truth might prevail.
That moment of journalistic integrity was heartbreakingly brief.
Before Israel had even launched a military response, before a single tank crossed into Gaza or a single aid convoy was delayed, the narrative began to shift. And with it, New Zealand’s media began doing something far more dangerous than misreporting — they began rewriting.
The gruesome reality of October 7 — families burned alive in their homes, children executed in front of their parents, young women raped and paraded as trophies through Gaza’s streets — was quietly downgraded in headlines and ledes. The perpetrators weren’t “terrorists” but “militants.” The massacre became an “incursion.” Within days, the media began asking the real question — not how could such an atrocity happen?, but why is Israel retaliating so forcefully?
This wasn’t a lapse in judgment. It was a calculated narrative pivot. And it should alarm every New Zealander who believes in truth, accountability, and moral responsibility.
Because when journalists excuse or obscure terrorism, they don’t just fail the public — they actively endanger it.
The Anatomy of Media Complicity
Hamas didn’t just plan a military operation on October 7. It planned a media campaign. The group’s leadership (backed, trained, and armed by Iran) understood that their path to political survival ran not through military victory, but narrative dominance. They bet on the world’s short memory and selective morality. And they were right.
As footage of the massacre flooded social media, Hamas and its allies were already flooding the zone with counter-narratives: doctored images, false claims, emotionally manipulative footage, and unverified casualty counts. These weren’t just organic expressions of grief — they were strategic disinformation. Within hours, Hamas had turned from butcher to victim in the minds of much of the global media.
And New Zealand’s press played right along.
Journalists and editors across the country (including at RNZ, Stuff, 1News, and The New Zealand Herald) amplified Hamas-provided casualty figures, published unverified images from Gaza without attribution or context, and repeatedly failed to distinguish between civilians and combatants. The tone of reporting shifted almost overnight from horror at Hamas’s actions to thinly veiled accusations against Israel.
Where were the follow-ups on Israeli survivors? Where were the in-depth investigations into the rape, torture, and kidnapping of children? Where was the sustained coverage of the 59 hostages who remain in Gaza today, living in cages, subject to unspeakable abuse?
Instead, New Zealanders were treated to human-interest features from Gaza, often lifted directly from international wire services with no scrutiny, no fact-checking, and no effort to explain the context: that Gaza is ruled by a terror organisation that has turned its own population into hostages and human shields.
Journalism as Narrative Warfare
This isn’t simply poor journalism — it is narrative warfare. And many New Zealand journalists have become willing foot soldiers in it.
There is a profound difference between reporting suffering and editorialising it into moral equivalence. Yet too many in our media fail to distinguish between a democratic nation defending its citizens from a genocidal terrorist group, and that terrorist group itself. The language of “balance” and “neutrality” is invoked — but only selectively.
Israel is routinely accused of “collective punishment.” The phrase appears in headlines, radio segments, and social media posts with no legal definition, no explanation, and no alternative view. But where are the accusations of systematic targeting of civilians against Hamas — an organisation that deliberately uses hospitals, schools, and mosques as launchpads for terror?
Where are the editorials exploring the grotesque double standard whereby Israel is held to impossible moral standards while Hamas is held to none?
Where is the journalistic courage to name Hamas for what it is: not a freedom movement, not a resistance organisation, but a fascist, misogynistic, genocidal cult that celebrates death?
By refusing to ask these questions (and by laundering Hamas talking points into mainstream discourse) the media are not only failing the truth. They are aiding terrorism.
The Ideological Infrastructure
How did it come to this? How did an atrocity so clear, so barbaric, become morally obscured in our public discourse?
Part of the answer lies in the ideological rot that has infected journalism globally and reached New Zealand’s newsrooms with little resistance. In a media culture increasingly driven by identity politics, post-colonial guilt, and reductive “oppressor vs oppressed” frameworks, nuance is the first casualty.
In this worldview, Israel (a liberal democracy surrounded by enemies, with Arab citizens in its parliament and LGBTQ rights enshrined in law) is cast as the “colonial oppressor.” Hamas, despite its overt antisemitism, repression of women, and religious extremism, is rebranded as a voice of “resistance.” The facts don’t matter. The narrative does.
This isn’t journalism. It’s activism. And worse — it’s activism that directly advances the agenda of those who seek to destroy not only Israel, but the liberal democratic values New Zealand itself claims to uphold.
The Consequences
The stakes are not abstract. When journalists blur moral lines, they embolden terror. When newsrooms downplay the murder and rape of Jews, they normalize antisemitism. When editors sanitise the language around hostage-taking and indiscriminate rocket fire, they make such atrocities more likely to happen again.
We are already seeing the consequences. Antisemitic incidents have surged in New Zealand. Jewish communities are facing increasing hostility, threats, and marginalisation. And too many of our elected officials and public figures are parroting the very same narratives that began with Hamas’s press releases and were dutifully reprinted, unchallenged, by our media.
There is still time to change course. But it requires the media to return to first principles: truth, accountability, and moral courage.
A Simple Test
Ask yourself this: if Hamas were to launch another October 7-style attack tomorrow (another rampage of slaughter, rape, and kidnapping) do you trust New Zealand’s media to cover it fairly?
If the answer is no, then we have a problem. A problem not just of journalism, but of national values.
Because when the media can no longer distinguish between a terror state and a democracy, between rape and resistance, between murder and self-defence — then the media are no longer a check on power.
They are an accessory to evil.
