From one hour before until one hour after Hamas released the bodies of four Israeli hostages, almost none of the world’s largest media sites placed the story in the top sections of their websites.
The Jerusalem Post screenshotted the top section of several top news outlets – the BBC, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, CNN, CBS, The Guardian, The Times, and Sky News – before and during the hostage body release (up to an hour after the transfer began). Most sites took over an hour to begin to place the story at the top of their sites.
Before the hostage release began, the only site to have mentioned the story in the top section of the website was CNN, with the title “Israeli hostage families forum receives ‘heart-shattering’ news of Bibas deaths.”
The top stories in the other outlets were all about US President Donald Trump, Ukraine, Russia, and Trump’s comments on Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky.
During and after the release
Then following the start of the release of the hostages’ coffins in Khan Yunis, the BBC, The Guardian, and Sky News published articles or live blogs relating to the event.
Of these three, The Guardian and Sky News used some sort of photo depicting the Bibas family or children as the story’s image. The only one that did not was the BBC, which showed an image of the Red Cross vehicles arriving, surrounded by Hamas terrorists.
The Times, The Washington Post, CBS, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times did not change their top stories from Russia-Ukraine and Trump items.
During the release, CNN changed its existing article to a live blog about the hostages.
The Associated Press’s second main news story during the release related to the hostage release, after the Russia-Ukraine war.
Mentions of Israel
Of the four sites that ran a story about the hostage release in their top story section, all included the word ‘Israel’ or ‘Israeli’ in their headline, except for the BBC, which made no mention of this in either the headliner or teaser.
The BBC’s headline for the first hour read, “Hamas returning first bodies of hostages held in Gaza,” and the teaser read, “The bodies of four hostages are being handed over, which Hamas says includes a mother and two children from the Bibas family.”
Interestingly, over an hour later, the title was changed to “Hamas transfers bodies of four Israeli hostages to Red Cross in Gaza.”
The BBC also chose to quote Hamas’s statement that “the group says it did “everything in [its] power to protect” the hostages and “preserve their lives.””
It added that “addressing the families of the hostages directly, Hamas says it would have preferred to have returned them alive.”
The BBC also said that “Red Cross workers can now be seen taking out white screens from their vehicles, [apparently] to shield it from the view of the crowds,” despite the fact, the crowds were able to see the four coffins displayed on stage until this point.