Award-winning journalist and former AP reporter Matti Friedman recently blew the whistle on the AP at the AJC Global Forum 2025. Friedman was stationed in Jerusalem, which, despite being in one of the smallest countries in the world, is the AP’s largest international desk.

Near the end of 2008, Friedman says, Hamas began threatening the AP. It began with a story from a Palestinian reporter that Hamas was dressing dead fighters as civilians in order to include those terrorists as part of the civilian death toll. As the article was about to go to print, a call came in demanding that fact be removed from the story. Friedman’s editor agreed.

Friedman requested the article at least include an Editor's Note to the story admitting the AP was now complying with Hamas censorship, but the editor refused.

“From that point in time, the AP, like all its sister organizations, collaborates with Hamas censorship in Gaza,” Friedman says.

Friedman says this is the reason news outlets show lots of dead and injured civilians but never seem to show or report any Hamas deaths. The “news” outlets are following Hamas orders “because the reporters sympathize with that side,” says Friedman, so “they're happy to play along.”

"The press has been essentially an amplifier for one of the most poisonous ideologies on Earth,” Friedman adds.

“All of the reporters in Gaza are Palestinians,” Friedman says, “and those people fall into three categories. Some of them identify with Hamas. Some of them are intimidated by Hamas and won't cross Hamas, which makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't want to cross Hamas either ... and the third category is people who actually belong to Hamas. That's where the information from Gaza is coming from.”

As a result, you are always “going to get a story that makes Israel look pretty bad,” if it comes from the AP — the world’s largest news service.

Friedman has written many articles on this subject, including a stunning piece titled “When We Started to Lie,” which serves as a scathing indictment of the present business of “news” reporting.

“I watched as the goal of mainstream journalism shifted from describing reality to ushering readers to the correct political conclusion,” Friedman says.

Sadly, even President Trump fell victim to the AP’s pro-Hamas propaganda machine. Last week, President Trump said he had seen media pictures of Palestinian children starving to death. He has now learned the truth.

As we reported last week, the child that the AP and New York Times claimed was being starved by Israel was actually a child born with cerebral palsy, whose condition arises from a birth defect, not starvation. The child’s mother and brother, when seen in the full unedited picture, are clearly healthy and well fed.

“Hamas has figured out how to make the press amplify its messaging rather than covering Hamas,” Friedman says.

Hamas isn’t doing anything new or creative. Instead, Hamas is simply utilizing the tactics of its former Nazi allies. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels often said that if one repeats a lie long enough, it becomes the truth. And right now, the AP appears to be helping Hamas create a new (but untrue) “truth.”

God gave my wife Anita and me a mission to defend the Holy Land with truth. You can count on Christians in Defense of Israel for TRUTHFUL reporting, as well as defending Israel in Washington, D.C., and around the world. But we cannot do this important, God-honoring work without YOU, the faithful CIDI supporter.

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Mat Staver
Founder and Chairman
Liberty Counsel

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SOURCES:

“About Us.” The Associated Press. Accessed August 4, 2025. AP.org/about/.

Friedman, Matti. “When We Started to Lie.” The Free Press, September 10, 2024. Thefp.com/p/friedman-when-we-started-to-lie.

‌“Journalist Matti Friedman Exposes Media Bias against Israel.” AJC, July 3, 2025. AJC.org/news/podcast/journalist-matti-friedman-exposes-media-bias-against-israel.

Nava, Victor. “New York Times Stunningly Rolls Back Claims about Viral Photo of Starving Gaza Boy.” New York Post, July 29, 2025. NYPost.com/2025/07/29/media/new-york-times-stunningly-rolls-back-claims-about-viral-photo-of-starving-gaza-boy/.

‌Nesi, Chris. “Viral Images of Starving Gaza Boy Don’t Tell the Whole Story Because He Suffers from Genetic Disorders, Critics Say.” New York Post, July 27, 2025. NYPost.com/2025/07/27/world-news/viral-images-of-starving-gaza-boy-dont-tell-the-whole-story-because-he-suffers-from-genetic-disorders-critics-say/.