Mainstream Media > ABC interviews Hamas operative as Gaza civil spokesperson; ZDF veteran journalist also a Hamas terrorist

 

ABC News Doesn’t Mention Its Interviewee in Gaza Belongs to Hamas

Nov 3, 2025 4:00 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald6 Comments

Amazing, isn’t it, how little due diligence our major networks perform when it comes to reporting on the war in Gaza. They accept, without questioning, Hamas-supplied figures on the numbers of killed and wounded, and on how many are women and children. They show photographs of “children killed in Gaza” who turn out to have been children killed in Yemen. They show “starving children in Gaza” who turn out to be children “starving” far from Gaza, and some who are not starving at all but have congenital diseases that make them appear to be starving. They conduct interviews with “journalists” who turn out to be members of Hamas; some of those “journalists” have even taken part in the atrocities carried out on October 7, 2023.

Take, for example, ABC’s latest interview with someone in Gaza, a certain Mahmoud Bassal, described by ABC only as an “emergency responder searching for Gazan civilians.” More on Bassal, and ABC’s failure to properly identify him, can be found here: 

ABC News Fails to Acknowledge Interviewee Is Hamas Spokesperson

by Sharon Levy, Algemeiner, October 30, 2025:

In Gaza, every public institution falls under the direct supervision of Hamas-affiliated terrorists. From journalists to the health ministry and civil defense, Hamas has embedded itself in every aspect of life.

In yet another textbook example of terrorists embedded in Gaza’s institutions, the IDF revealed in June 2025 that the “Gaza Civil Spokesperson,” Mahmoud Bassal, is an active Hamas operative.

His words are frequently echoed throughout the media, shaping and distorting the narrative of Israel’s war against Hamas — often without attribution to his Hamas affiliation.

ABC News took that one step further, interviewing Bassal as an emergency responder searching for missing Gazan civilians.

Not once did it cross the interviewers’ minds to do the most basic due diligence a journalist can — a background check on those being interviewed.

ABC News has a responsibility to acknowledge the affiliation of an interviewee, particularly if it is relevant to the story they are covering.

This would have been the case had ABC noted that those searching in the rubble were members of Gaza’s Civil Defense: a Hamas front organization. But ABC didn’t even do that….

How difficult would it have been for the ABC journalists to check with Israeli authorities on the background of Mahmoud Bassal before interviewing him? A phone call would have done the trick. Or they might in two seconds flat have done an internet search for Bassal’s name and found right here that he is a member of Hamas. Why didn’t the ABC interviewer do this?

ABC News owes its audience an explanation and a public clarification.

Amen, sister, amen.

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German Media Giant ZDF: Our Man in Gaza Was Hamas Terrorist

Nov 2, 2025 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald2 Comments

As is well known, many of the so-called “journalists” in Gaza, reporting for the Western media, have turned out to be members of Hamas, supplying their employers with stories that emphasize the IDF’s “wanton barbarity” and “war crimes,” and present Hamas as the brave face of the “resistance” to Israeli oppression and “occupation” (a curious word to use, given that Israel pulled out entirely from Gaza in 2005). Now, the German media giant ZDF has admitted that one of its key journalists in Gaza, killed last week in an Israeli airstrike, was a member of Hamas. More on that admission, and ZDF’s response, can be found here: 

German broadcaster admits killed partner org. employee was Hamas terrorist,

suspends cooperation

Jerusalem Post, October 29, 2025:

The German public broadcaster Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) announced on Monday that an employee of its Palestinian partner organization, who was killed last week, was a Hamas terrorist.

Israel provided the television network with evidence proving 37-year-old Ahmed Abu Mutair’s involvement in the terrorist group, the ZDF confirmed.

It has now suspended cooperation with the Palestine Media Production (PMP) company after working with the organization for decades, the ZDF said.

“The ZDF welcomes the fact that the Israeli army has complied with the request to clarify the identity of the killed employee of the production company PMP in Gaza,” the broadcaster said.

Mutair was killed less than two weeks ago in Deir el-Balah along with an eight-year-old son of a coworker, according to the ZDF.

A source told Bild that Mutair had been the target.

“A corresponding document was presented as evidence. Based on the document, the ZDF assumes that the engineer was a member of the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades,” the network said in a statement.

“In response, the ZDF has suspended cooperation until further notice. The document does not provide any information on when or how the engineer worked for Hamas, or on the tasks he undertook,” it further said.

“According to current information, however, the ZDF has no indications that other PMP employees might be members of Hamas. The IDF has also not provided the ZDF with any such information,” it continued.

Responding to the news, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that Hamas’s narratives were ubiquitous in the media….

How often does the international media report, as fact, Hamas’ statistics on the wounded and dead in Gaza, and does not question Hamas’ claims as to how many of those casualties were women and children? How many in the media repeatedly report tall tales about Israeli snipers wantonly killing civilians — dozens, hundreds — as they stood in line up for food? How many report that there is “famine” in Gaza, despite a lack of evidence, merely because Hamas claims it?

Good, however, has come of this. ZDF has now suspended its longstanding reliance on the Palestine Media Production. The PMP will have to find some other media outlet in the West to take its reports as reliable. But that won’t be easy. Now that the ZDF has exposed ties between Hamas and the PMP, what Western media company would willingly look gullible by trusting PMP to supply it with material?

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German Reporter Says Douma was Completely Staged - MSM Won't Report It

This German reporter went live on ZDF in Germany and reported that he had met with many people in Damascus who had left Douma after the infamous chemical attack. They consistently reported that it was the rebel forces who brought chlorine canisters into the area and located them where they know Syrian troops would drop bombs. 

“People told us in a very convincing manner that this whole story was staged,” Uli Gack, a reporter with the German ZDF public broadcaster, said (referring to the alleged Douma chemical attack) while he spoke live on ZDF Heute (‘Today’) show on Satuday.

The scene of the attack, which allegedly took place on April 7, was in fact the “command post” of a local Islamist group, the reporter said, citing the witnesses he was able to speak to at the refugee camp.

He went on to say that, according to the locals, the militants brought canisters containing chlorine to the area and “actually waited for the Syrian Air Force to bomb the place, which was of particular interest for them.”

As the Syrian forces eventually struck the place, which was apparently a high-priority military target, the chlorine canisters exploded. The locals also told Gack that it is not the first such provocation in Douma that was staged by the militants.

According to other witness accounts, the militants deliberately exposed people to chemical agents during what they called “training exercises” then filmed it and later presented as an “evidence” of the alleged chemical attack in Douma.

The reporter then said he could not verify the people’s statements and cannot say if they are all true but called them quite “convincing” and added that they deserve attention.

Earlier, the Russian military said that they had found a laboratory operated by militants in central Douma, which was capable of producing chemical weapons.

In particular they found a cylinder filled with chlorine, which looks similar to the one that was shown in one of the videos of the alleged chemical attack in Douma and presented as a “chemical bomb dropped from a helicopter.”

The purported chemical incident in Douma allegedly took place on April 7. A week later, Washington and its allies launched a massive retaliatory missile strike against Syria, without even waiting for the Organization for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to start its investigation of the incident.

In the meantime, western media embarked on a massive campaign of accusing Moscow and Damascus of “blocking” the OPCW investigators from accessing the scene of the alleged attack. Gack, however, also seemingly dismissed this narrative, saying that the delay in the OPCW team’s work may indeed have been caused by security issues.

The German reporter also pointed out that some hidden extremist cells might be still operating and carrying out attacks in the recently liberated areas, even “weeks” after they had been retaken from militants.

Or, somebody ran around behind a building, fired a couple shots and a grenade to make it sound like the advance force was under attack. The OPCW's first delay was caused by the premature western strikes; I would be surprised if other delays weren't caused by western interests.

MSM response?

Gack’s report was immediately labeled as “propaganda” by some of his fellow journalists in Germany. A reporter with the German Bild daily, Bjoern Stritzel, who in particular is said to have been working undercover and actively communicating with Islamic State terrorists, lashed out at Gack, calling his report an “unbelievable pro-Assad propaganda on German Television.”

If you look for this report in English media, you will only find it in Russian News and in German on ZDF. MSM does not want to hear anything that remotely resembles the truth, only that which demonizes Assad and gives warrant to the west to keep bombing Syria to hell.

Last week, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said that there are still militants in Douma who “terrorize citizens and, among other things, impede the normal work of representatives of the international community – the UN and the OPCW.” On Saturday, the OPCW eventually confirmed that its team visited one of the sites of the suspected chemical attack in Douma and collected samples for analysis.