Why did the VOA temporarily remove a video for containing ‘debunked claims’ about October 7 that were certainly true and correct?
Voice of America’s struggles to appropriately cover Hamas continued earlier this month, when it took down a segment about antisemitism for three hours, citing uncertainty over some essential facts about what took place on October 7, according to internal emails I obtained.
Here at National Review, I’ve chronicled VOA’s previous missteps on related questions, namely whether to label Hamas as a terrorist organization in its reporting.
At first, VOA’s official stance was that reporters and editors should not call Hamas members “terrorists” unless referring to a country’s designation of the group as a terrorist organization or quoting someone in a story. Last October, editors even changed a story to excise a reference to Hamas members as terrorists.
After lawmakers protested the policy based on public reporting, VOA officially reversed the policy (though little has changed in practice, with top editors saying in private that they follow the initial guidance).
Why all of this matters is simple. VOA isn’t only a major outlet with a massive international audience; it’s a U.S.-government-funded news organization with a statutory mandate to serve as a “reliable and authoritative” source that represents all of America, not just any single segment of society. To directly characterize Hamas as a terrorist organization is to simply reflect the truth about what this group is and what its members do.
The latest episode highlighting VOA’s difficulties in covering Hamas concerns “Report: Violence targeting US Jews up 103% in 2023,” a video segment published the morning of May 8. It examined how Hamas’s attack on Israel has sparked an increase in antisemitic incidents across the world, focusing on statistics from a new report that found a 103 percent increase in antisemitic crimes in America.
The three-minute story featured an interview with Noa Tishby, an Israeli actress who recently published a book about antisemitism in America. She spoke about the Hamas-perpetrated atrocities during the attack, which have been subject to aggressive whitewashing and denial campaigns by anti-Israel figures.
“October 7th felt to the Jewish community like a repeat of the Holocaust, when we heard the same stories of mothers hugging their children while they’re being burnt alive, and children and teens and kids hiding in cabinets and decapitation and mutilation and rapes,” Tishby said, in comments that were included in the segment.
A bit after 3 p.m. on May 8, an editor sent an email under the heading “MAKE NO FURTHER USE: US ANTISEMITISM,” using a shorthand name for the segment. The note explained: “It contains debunked claims about the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and contains some profanity, which we will handle. We will send a new version soon.”
The email did not identify the exact parts of the segment that contained “debunked claims,” though the only part of the story that addressed October 7 in detail was the interview with Tishby. The video was pulled from VOA’s website after the email went out.
Then, approximately three hours later, the editor sent another email, saying, “This TV script is being rereleased. It has obscenities blurred out and has been approved by upper management at VOA Central.”
The story reappeared on VOA’s website shortly after that, a bit after 7 p.m. A camera shot featuring an obscenity that had been scrawled on a poster showing the image of an Israeli hostage — an example of post-October 7 antisemitism covered in the segment — had been blurred out, per VOA policy. There were no other changes to purportedly “debunked” statements. Tishby’s quote remained in place.
Since the only evident change was that blurred-out image, it appears that “debunked claims” about October 7 relayed by Tishby were flagged by editors at VOA. Then, during the three-hour period that followed, and discussions with “upper management,” the outlet decided not to censor Tishby’s comments about the attack, which referred to horrific crimes that Hamas certainly perpetrated on October 7.
In comments to National Review, a spokesman for the outlet explained only that editors saw the profanities, which violated VOA standards, after the story was published. “After removing the images of profanity and a further review of the story, VOA’s editors determined the piece did not violate any other standards and it was republished without further changes,” the spokesman said. He declined to elaborate on the nature of the statements about October 7 that VOA editors had initially flagged.
It’s noteworthy that Tisbhy’s remarks on October 7 appear to have been flagged as “debunked” at all, even though VOA management ultimately chose not to alter her comments in the story. After taking a drubbing in Washington last year, the outlet’s management now appears more sensitive to the perception that it’s a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment. Still, this episode suggests that VOA might still have a ways to go in terms of addressing that problem.