Headline Roundup • November 2nd, 2023
Can We Trust Gaza Death Toll Numbers?
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says nearly 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza amid fighting over the past few weeks, including around 3,000 children. Can we trust the numbers?
Biden's Comment: "I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war," said President Joe Biden last week. "I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using."
How the Media Covered it: Sources across the spectrum said death tolls during conflicts should generally be treated with skepticism, but support for Biden's comment was flipped along partisan lines. The Washington Post's fact checker (Lean Left bias) said Biden "appeared to show excessive skepticism" about the death toll, and said Gaza's health ministry "has had a pretty good track record with its death estimates over the years." Vox (Left) similarly said the numbers "have been found largely accurate" and are used by "news organizations, human rights groups, and international governments and bodies (including the United Nations)." The Federalist (Right bias) said "the U.N. is a viper’s nest of people who are anti-Israel at best, and openly anti-semitic at worst," and said the Post's fact check sided "with the terrorists."
Why the Difference? The left is generally more sympathetic to Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. The right is skeptical of any information coming from Hamas. Read more about ideological divisions on Israel and Palestine.
Featured Coverage of this Story
IMAGE CREDIT MAG1059/FLICKR / CC BY-SA 4.0
Way back in 2011, I started crusading against the dishonesty of the media’s so-called “fact checkers.” I gained some notoriety and did a whirlwind of media on the subject for a few years, but these days I don’t write about the topic as much, mostly because the fact-checkers have done a tremendous job of discrediting themselves.
But just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Here’s a howler from the Washington Post: “Fact Checker: The president said he had ‘no confidence’ in the figures issued by the Hamas-run health ministry,...
The Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 killed more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers, according to count by the Israeli prime minister’s office. Israel’s response — a bombing campaign and now a major ground assault — had killed 8,309 as of Sunday, according to a count by the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, a militant group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
In any war, statistics on deaths are fuzzy and subject to change. Almost a month after the Hamas attack, the precise number of...
The Hamas-controlled Gaza health authorities said more than 9,000 people have been killed in the enclave since Israel began its bombing campaign, most of them women and children. They don’t distinguish between militants and civilians.
Israeli airstrikes this week on the densely-populated Jabalia neighborhood in Gaza have pushed the death toll higher and sparked an international backlash as Israel continues the most intense air campaign in its history. Israel launched its assault on Gaza after an incursion by Hamas on Oct. 7 that Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 Israelis, including...
