The Gatekeepers of "Facts": How AP and Reuters Shape Billions of Minds
If AP and Reuters Don’t Report It, Did It Even Happen?
If deaths occur but no one hears about them, did they really happen? Like a tree falling in a forest with no witness, unreported Hamas crimes are being erased from reality altogether. It’s been more than 24 hours since Hamas attacked murdered five Palestinian humanitarian aid workers in Gaza — workers affiliated with a charity responsible for distributing food to hungry civilians, the Gaza Humanitarian Fund. Neither AP or Reuters has published a headline on their website. Nothing on X/Twitter. No “Breaking” alert. Nothing on the wire.
And the few outlets that did report it? They did it with suspicion. The story was framed with “claims” from “controversial organization,” “unconfirmed,” “no confirmation from Hamas” — as if Hamas is the gold standard of truth. This is a pattern too: when Hamas says something, it’s repeated as gospel; when Israel or the U.S. reports something — even with evidence — it’s suddenly just an “allegation.” The terrorists get credibility; the victims get doubt. Every time.
But the real problem here, you wouldn’t know about the attack and murders if you relied on the Associated Press (AP) or Reuters for your world news. And you don’t really know your favorite news outlet relies on the AP or Reuters. AP and Reuters are the global veins through which news flows.
Your local TV anchor reading headlines about Gaza last night? Probably pulled them from the wire. Your favorite liberal or conservative newspaper or website articles? Probably Reuters or AP copy, slightly tweaked. Agencies like AP and Reuters are the news behind the news. If it doesn’t hit the wire, it’s as if it didn’t happen — not just for you, but for millions of people around the world.
Here’s why this silence matters: AP and Reuters are not just news agencies — they are the backbone of global news.
Reuters supplies news to over 2,500 media outlets in 128 countries.
The Associated Press (AP) provides news to more than 15,000 media outlets in the United States alone — including virtually every major regional newspaper, TV station, and news website — and has over 1,300 official member newspapers and broadcasters worldwide.
In dozens of countries, especially in Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, local outlets either cannot afford foreign correspondents or lack on-the-ground access. What they run is mostly wire copy, often verbatim.
This means that millions of people form their worldview based on what Reuters and AP decide to report — or in this case, not report.
A clear example on how a false or inaccurate reporting from major news agencies like AP affects global reporting, a single false report was repeated by more than 80 North American outlets. CAMERAorg was able to get a correction, but by the time it is fixed, the damage is done.
An Oxford Reuters Institute study in 2023 found that nearly 60% of international news content in European and African newspapers comes directly from news agencies like AP, Reuters, and AFP. For smaller outlets, that number is even higher — up to 80% reliance on wire copy.
If AP or Reuters doesn’t cover a story, entire continents won’t hear it.
Estimated global impact:
If AP & Reuters don’t cover a story, roughly 70-80% of the world’s population will likely never hear about it from their local or national media. That’s billions of people forming opinions on incomplete stories — by design.
Considering global internet access (about 5 billion people online, as of 2025), it’s reasonable to estimate that 3.5 to 4 billion people rely at least partially on mainstream, wire-fed media for international news.
And maybe that’s why the UN and all the usual human rights organizations are silent — Reuters and AP didn’t tell them about it, and their Hamas sources are too busy cooking up the next headline only Hamas can “verify.”
And this isn’t just about what gets omitted — it’s about how what’s covered gets framed. A recent study published in Tablet Magazine showed that major media outlets have disproportionately covered the Israel-Hamas war over other global conflicts and manufactured a narrative of “Genocide,” which means their omission isn’t due to lack of air-time, staff or space in the cloud to host the articles. It is a deliberate decision, one driven by bias and rating.
Want proof of media bias and ratings games? In November 2023, the world never learned UNRWA was indoctrinating children into jihad and how thousands of UN teachers praised human slaughter. A senior U.S. newsroom head was already calling Gaza a “genocide”—real stories don’t bring ratings.
From the very beginning, the war was framed as a “genocide,” since October 19, 2023—just twelve days after Hamas butchered over 1,200 people and kidnapped 250, until today 53 remain hostage. The New York Times had published nine times more articles using the terms “Israel” and “genocide” than it ever did during the Rwandan genocide. The Guardian? Six times more. Combine that relentless framing with the routine omission of Hamas atrocities or UN complicity with Hamas, and you manufacture the perfect propaganda product: a defenseless, stateless people at the mercy of “evil Jews.” The narrative isn’t just biased — it’s engineered from the start.
These five Palestinian aid workers are just the latest additions to the long, ignored list of Hamas victims in Gaza — victims the media and much of the world refuse to see. If their deaths can’t be blamed on Israel, they don’t count. As The Spectator put it, these are the “inconvenient Palestinians” — like the 15% of Gaza’s killed, including women and children, by Hamas’s own rockets, quietly forgotten because they don’t fit the script. Remember Al-Ahli hospital? The case is not unique.
Want to know the worst part? When Palestinians are killed by Hamas or others inside of Gaza or West Bank — especially women and children — their deaths are used as propaganda against Israel. Take the case of Layan Belal Mohammed Moddawikh, 8 years old, killed by a failed Islamic Jihad rocket in Gaza City. That didn’t stop Ramzy Baroud from exploiting her death to blame Israel, turning a PIJ-caused tragedy into another weapon in the global propaganda war.
In May 2023, in Gaza, her death and of several other children wasn’t mourned — it was celebrated, because the barrage of rockets fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad had managed to kill a single Jew: Inga Avramyan, was 80 year-olds from Rehovot. She was crushed by the ceiling collapsing trying to help her paralyzed husband reach the bomb shelter. Inga’s husband Sergei was disabled after a car accident, he was partially paralyzed and had a leg amputated, he was unable to reach shelter unaided. He was lightly wounded in the rocket attack.
If you search her name, you will only find Israeli sources speaking of her death. Not Reuters, not AP, not the BBC, CNN or any other media outside of Israel, her name not mentioned in the countless reports of the UN or Human rights organizations. Inga’s family tragedy didn’t end with her death, her husband died a few months later at the age of 86. His family said that his physical and mental health quickly deteriorated after his injuries and his wife’s death.
A man from Gaza was also killed inside Israel; he was one of the thousands of Gazans who used to enter Israel daily for work before October 7th. Among those celebrating the attack were, of course, UNRWA teachers. Take the case of Yousef Yousef, who wrote in the UNRWA “Terrogram” group exposed by UN Watch in January 2024. The group’s administrator expressed his joy over the death, adding heart emojis.
Just yesterday, Al Jazeera paraded yet another inflated list of “journalists killed,” most of them Hamas operatives or people who never actually died. But what the list didn’t show is the real tragedy: the handful of actual, independent Palestinian journalists who dared to report Hamas crimes — beaten, tortured, murdered. None of them made it onto Al Jazeera’s “martyr” count, because their deaths don’t count, they don’t serve the narrative.
Fully Agree!
I'd also like to share something tangentially related.
A few years ago when I worked as a floater pharmacist, I met an Ethiopian colleague who said his tribe was being killed and he was trying to get his wife out.
I searched and all I could find was one short news article about civil war.*
Soon after, I got a call from the scheduler desperately trying to cover his shifts as he'd taken Leave of Absence. I never heard anything else about him.
Black Lives Matter sounded ever more hollow as liberals en masse soon put Ukraine flag signs in their yards next to their Black Lives Matter signs. In their defense, they can legitimately say they didn't know.
News organizations failed to report it and need to be held accountable.
*Searching now, years later, I found this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_war
Here's a perfect example of total b******* propaganda