"According to the Hamas-run health ministry." You have heard it thousands of times, attached to a number: how many Palestinians Israel has killed in Gaza.

"Hamas-run" is lazy. Gaza's health ministry answers to two governments. The Palestinian Authority's health minister in Ramallah oversees it, and Ramallah supplies its medical equipment, AP reported. Ramallah pays the staff who were hired before 2007. Gaza's Hamas-run government has paid the staff hired since, according to Reuters. AP says Hamas exerts control over the ministry, and that its staff are a mix of recent Hamas hires and older civil servants linked to Fatah. Two words tell the audience none of that.

But the core problem is not that the label is lazy. The core problem is that the data shows the outlets use it in bad faith: above all the BBC, and also Sky News, the Times and America's ABC and CBS. There are five problems with it:

• They keep it for governments they do not treat as legitimate. The same outlets cited Israel's health ministry 174 times and never called it Likud-run, Netanyahu-run or government-run. On the BBC News channel, "Labour-run NHS" comes only from Conservative politicians attacking Labour, never from a presenter or reporter.
• They rarely used it before Israel began its genocide in Gaza. Hamas had governed Gaza since 2007, and the same ministry counted the dead in 2014, 2018 and 2021. The outlets made the label routine in October 2023.
• They put it beside the death toll, and it is there to make the audience doubt the number. The White House gave that reasoning in October 2023, and CNN told its staff to use the label whenever they cited casualty figures.
• The number holds up. After Israel's 2014 assault the ministry reported 2,310 dead and the UN verified 2,251. A peer-reviewed study in The Lancet found that the ministry had missed about two deaths in every five.
• They put the same label on Gaza's rescue workers and police, including in reports that Israel had killed those officers.

The death toll is the record of Israel's genocide in Gaza. The UN Commission of Inquiry concluded in September 2025 that Israel has committed genocide there, and the International Court of Justice ordered Israel in January 2024 to prevent genocidal acts. Israel rejects the finding.

So we counted how often each outlet put the label on Gaza's health ministry, before October 2023 and since. We used language models, set up for this one task with NewsCord's own instructions and scripts, to read 45,577 passages of British and American news coverage, on air and in print, with Al Jazeera English as a comparison. For every passage they logged whether a presenter, reporter or article cited Gaza's health ministry, and what they called it. The method is set out at the end, and every logged citation can be downloaded.

What the figures show:

• Before 7 October 2023, the outlets put a Hamas label on Gaza's health ministry in 49 of 828 citations. That is 6%.
• Since 7 October 2023, they have done it in 8,568 of 18,370. That is 47%.
• The label did exist before. BBC News online used it in 9 of its 27 earlier citations in our small sample, and the New York Times used it in May 2021.
• On air alone, where our record from before is fullest, the outlets went from 32 of 627 to 4,722 of 8,344.
• The BBC News channel put the label on 7 of 168 citations before, and on 2,836 of 4,246 since, which is 67%.
• BBC News online has put it on 1,493 of 1,789 since, which is 83%. Nine in ten BBC articles that cite the ministry or Gaza's health officials carry the label at least once: 1,349 of 1,461.
• ABC, CBS and NBC network news and PBS NewsHour, between them, labelled 0 of 32 citations before and 662 of 969 since. Those 32 are a small sample.
• MSNBC labelled 0 of 102 before and 214 of 715 since.
• CNN on air labelled 19 of 253 before and 459 of 1,359 since.

These figures leave out Al Jazeera English. In the sample of its broadcasts that we read, it cited the same ministry 676 times since October 2023 and put a Hamas label on it 4 times.

The same outlets on Israel's health ministry, outlet by outlet. Not one of their citations carried a party or government label:

The same channels citing the same ministry, before October 2023 and since:

BBC News online in 2014, 2024, 2025 and 2026:

Every channel we counted, by how often it has used the label on air since October 2023:

We counted Sky News, ITV News and Channel 4 News from the reports they uploaded to YouTube, because we could not retrieve a full archive of their broadcasts. Their uploads are a smaller and less complete record than the others, so read those three rows with care: ITV News 24 of 32, Channel 4 News 31 of 84, Sky News 38 of 113.

The outlets switched to "Hamas-run" in three weeks of October 2023

On 17 October 2023 an explosion hit al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City. The ministry said 500 people were killed, then 471. A preliminary US intelligence estimate, made with low confidence, put the figure at the low end of 100 to 300. People who doubt the ministry still give that one disputed figure as a reason to doubt all the others.

On 18 October, the next day, eight major US outlets between them used the labelled form more often than the plain one for the first time. That finding comes from the Anti-Defamation League's own data.

On 25 October President Biden said: "I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using." The next day the White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the ministry was "just a front for Hamas, it is run by Hamas, a terrorist organisation", and that its figures could not be taken at face value, The National reported. He did not dispute that the toll was rising.

Less than a day after Biden spoke, the ministry published the names, ages, sex and ID numbers of 6,747 people it had recorded dead.

On 26 October CNN's standards department emailed its staff. The Intercept later published the instruction: "Hamas controls the government in Gaza and we should describe the Ministry of Health as 'Hamas-controlled' whenever we are referring to casualty statistics or other claims related to the present conflict."

CNN's instruction named casualty statistics first. Each time an outlet puts "Hamas-run" beside a death toll and nothing else, it repeats the White House's reasoning to its audience.

On air the change was fast. The BBC News channel put the label on 189 of 667 citations in October 2023, which is 28%, and on 354 of 502 in November, which is 71%. CNN went from 84 of 328 in October to 146 of 200 in December.

The outlets would say the 7 October attack made Hamas's role in Gaza's government newsworthy. But Hamas governed Gaza in 2014, 2018 and 2021 too, and it was the same ministry counting the dead.

They would also say that Hamas is an armed group, and that Britain, America and Israel have elected governments. By that rule, an armed group which runs a territory gets its name on the health ministry. They put a Houthi label on the health ministry in Yemen's capital in 65 of 86 citations. But until October 2023 they rarely applied it to Gaza, where Hamas had run the government since 2007.

CNN and the Guardian dropped it. AP dropped it and later rewrote it. The BBC and ABC kept it

Several outlets stopped using the label and went on reporting the same figures. So accurate reporting does not require it.

CNN used it heavily at the end of 2023, then all but stopped. On air, it labelled 146 of 200 citations in December 2023. By March 2024 that was 11 of 80. In the whole of 2025 it was 18 of 473, which is 4%.

The Associated Press told subscribers to its style guide in November 2023: "We generally use Hamas-run Health Ministry, but as you note, not always." The journalist Matthew Petti reproduced the answer. In the last three months of 2023 AP labelled 29 of 152 citations. In the first half of 2024 it labelled 14 of 451.

The Guardian labelled 90 of 227 citations in the last three months of 2023. In the second half of 2025 it labelled 3 of 222.

The New York Times and Reuters hardly used it at all: 5 of 141 citations and 2 of 90.

These outlets went on reporting the same ministry's figures, from the same daily statements, without the label.

The only published ruling on the phrase that we found comes from Canada's CBC. Its ombudsman said in December 2024 that the label is accurate and should not be banned, and that it should be used as sparingly as possible and only when it is relevant.

BBC News online kept putting Hamas's name on the ministry. It labelled 200 of 265 citations at the end of 2023, 385 of 456 in the first half of 2024, and 54 of 85 since July 2026. On the BBC News channel the rate has fallen in 2026, to 96 of 268 citations. CNN's figure for 2026 is 0 of 41.

Sky News online peaked at 288 of 343 in the second half of 2024 and was still at 69 of 104 a year later. America's ABC network news was still labelling 42 of 47 citations in the second half of 2025.

On 9 November 2026 the BBC reported that a sand bank had collapsed onto tents in central Gaza after heavy rain, killing four people: "Three children and one woman were killed when a sand embankment collapsed onto tents in central Gaza following heavy rain, the Hamas-run health ministry says." Three years on, the BBC reports a sand bank collapsing on tents and still puts Hamas's name on the people who counted the bodies.

In July 2026 Hamas said it had dissolved its government in Gaza to hand power to a UN-backed committee, AP reported. We have not established who the ministry answers to now. BBC News online has put "Hamas-run" on 54 of 85 citations since the start of that month.

The BBC has said its casualty figures are clearly attributed. We could find nothing it has published that explains why the attribution needs Hamas's name in it.

AP did bring a Hamas link back in July 2025, in a sentence about who runs the ministry: "The ministry is run by medical professionals employed by the Hamas government, and its numbers are widely cited by the U.N. and international organizations." We count that as a label, which is why AP's line on the chart below rises again, to 65 of 155 citations in 2026. But compare it with the BBC's two words. AP's sentence tells the reader who works at the ministry and who relies on its figures. The BBC's two words say Hamas. In about one online citation in ten the BBC adds something that supports the figures, usually that the UN sees them as reliable.

The news sites split the same way across the whole three years. BBC News online, the Times, Sky News and ABC News each put the label on more than seven in every ten citations. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters and NBC News each put it on fewer than one in fourteen.

AP, the Washington Post and the New York Times qualified the death toll far more often than they supported it

We also counted what the outlets added next to each citation.

A doubt line says the figures cannot be verified, that Israel disputes them, or that the ministry does not separate civilians from combatants. A support line says the UN relies on the figures, that they held up after Israel's earlier assaults on Gaza, or that studies have found them too low.

Of all citations of the ministry or Gaza's health officials since October 2023:

• The Los Angeles Times added doubt in 228 of 510 and support in 68.
• AP added doubt in 807 of 1,913 and support in 248.
• The Washington Post added doubt in 301 of 838 and support in 59.
• The New York Times added doubt in 105 of 301 and support in 15.
• Sky News online added doubt in 245 of 840 and support in 32.
• CBS News online added doubt in 228 of 625 and support in 56.
• CNN on air added doubt in 335 of 1,836 and support in 84.

The Washington Post and the New York Times barely used "Hamas-run". They more often added a caveat, almost always the same one: that the ministry does not separate civilians from combatants. That caveat is accurate. But the Post added doubt five times as often as it added anything that supports the figures, and the Times seven times as often.

Two large outlets went the other way. BBC News online added support in 191 of 2,010 citations and doubt in 159, most often with a clause such as "whose figures the UN sees as reliable" straight after "Hamas-run". The Guardian added support in 145 of 1,172 and doubt in 111.

What critics of the ministry's figures say, and what the record shows

Critics of the ministry's figures make three points:

• Al-Ahli. The ministry's first figure for the hospital explosion was 500, then 471, and a preliminary US intelligence estimate was far lower. AP, which reviewed the ministry's record, called that figure an outlier.
• Women and children. In June 2024 AP found that the ministry's own lists of names showed a lower share of women and children than its daily statements had claimed. AP did not say the total was invented, and went on using the lists.
• Fighters. The ministry counts the dead without saying which of them were fighters.

This is what the record shows:

• After Israel's 2008 to 2009 assault, the ministry reported 1,440 dead and the UN verified 1,383. In 2014 the ministry reported 2,310 and the UN verified 2,251. Israel's own foreign ministry put the 2014 toll at about 2,125. The UN counts drew partly on the ministry's data.
• The head of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees said in October 2023: "In the past, the five, six cycles of conflict in the Gaza Strip, these figures were considered as credible and no one ever really challenged these figures".
• In December 2023 three Johns Hopkins researchers, writing in The Lancet, found no evidence that the ministry was inflating its count in the first five weeks.
• The January 2025 Lancet study gave a range of 55,298 to 78,525 for its estimate of 64,260 deaths from traumatic injury by 30 June 2024, against the ministry's 37,877. Its authors concluded that the ministry had missed about two deaths in every five.
• A household survey published in The Lancet Global Health, covering the period to 5 January 2025, put the ministry's figure about 35% below its own estimate. It could not reach northern Gaza, Gaza City or Rafah, and its sampling has been criticised.
• In January 2024 anonymous Israeli intelligence sources told the Israeli outlet Local Call that the army regarded the ministry's civilian death counts as broadly reliable, and used them. In January 2026 a senior Israeli military official told Israeli reporters, without being named, that the army believed about 70,000 people had been killed. The army then said those details were not official data. The army has not published a death toll of its own.

Both peer-reviewed studies that estimated the total found the ministry's count too low. More than half the outlets mentioned an undercount less often than they said the figures could not be verified. AP, the Guardian and the Washington Post were exceptions.

The BBC puts Hamas's name on the rescue service too

Gaza's civil defence is its fire and rescue service. Its crews dig families out of bombed houses. Since October 2023 the BBC has put a Hamas label on the civil defence in 374 of 507 citations: 221 of 305 on air and 153 of 202 online.

CNN did it in 1 of 61. The Guardian did it in 5 of 52.

The BBC is not alone. AP put the label on the civil defence in 34 of 65 citations, the Times in 17 of 29 and the Telegraph in 13 of 28. But of the outlets that cited the civil defence at least 20 times, none did it as often as the BBC, and no outlet did it as many times.

This is the BBC on 15 October 2024: "Gaza's Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said its first responders had recovered the bodies of 42 people killed by Israeli air and artillery strikes in Jabalia and neighbouring areas on Tuesday."

The BBC also labelled Gaza's government media office in 72 of 75 citations.

Israel kills police officers, and outlets call them "Hamas police"

Gaza has police officers, as everywhere does. During the genocide they escorted aid lorries so that food reached people.

Israel has repeatedly killed them. In February 2024 the US envoy David Satterfield said Israeli strikes had killed officers who escorted aid convoys, and that the police had stopped escorting as a result. He said the police include Hamas members as well as people with no direct link to it. In August 2025 the UN human rights office said: "Since 7 October 2023, we have recorded dozens of incidents in which the Israeli military unlawfully targeted civilian police officers not taking part in hostilities".

The UN's fact-finding mission on Gaza set out the law in 2009: "The general rule of international humanitarian law is that members of law-enforcement agencies are considered part of the civilian population, unless they have been incorporated into the armed forces of a party to the conflict."

Israel says some of the officers it has killed were also members of Hamas's armed wing. The same UN mission dealt with that argument when it examined Israel's 2008 to 2009 assault: "The Mission finds that, while a great number of the Gaza policemen were recruited among Hamas supporters or members of Palestinian armed groups, the Gaza police were a civilian law-enforcement agency."

We found 223 passages in which an outlet, in its own voice, called these officers "Hamas police", "Hamas-run police" or similar. In 129 of them, the passage was reporting that Israeli forces had struck, killed, targeted or detained them. Another 98 passages put the label on Gaza's security forces, 38 of them about Israeli strikes. The BBC News channel accounts for 47 of the police passages and AP for 43.

On 2 January 2025 an Israeli strike on a tent camp for displaced people killed the head of Gaza's police force and his deputy, Gaza's civil defence said. Israel said it had targeted the deputy and accused him of helping Hamas's armed wing. The BBC's article reported the interior ministry's answer that the police are a "civilian protection agency". Its headline was: "Hamas police chief among 40 reported killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza".

AP has written "Hamas-run police" too. But its March 2024 sentence, like the Washington Post's, shows that the fuller description takes one clause. The BBC's sentence does not tell the audience that police officers count as civilians under the law unless they have joined the armed forces or are taking part in the fighting. It tells them the dead man was Hamas police.

Putting Hamas's name on Gaza's public workers dehumanises them. In the three months before the genocide, 28.9% of everyone with a job in Gaza worked for the public sector or a local authority, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The figure covers people paid by the Palestinian Authority as well as people paid by Gaza's government. Whoever runs the government, nurses, clerks, firefighters and police still have to go to work. When an outlet puts Hamas's name on them, it echoes the Israeli military's case that the people it killed were Hamas.

The outlets rarely put the label on hospitals and schools. We found 18 passages that put it on a hospital and 2 that put it on a school.

The BBC is still doing it

For years, on air, the BBC, CNN and the American networks reported Gaza's dead by citing the health ministry, almost always with no label. In October 2023 they put Hamas's name on it. CNN and the Guardian have since taken it off, and they still report the same figures.

The BBC has put Hamas's name on Gaza's health ministry in 4,329 citations since October 2023, on air and online. It was still doing it this month.

How we counted

We logged 45,577 passages. A passage is a stretch of an article around a citation, or one minute of a programme's subtitles.

On air: 26,535 programmes from the Internet Archive's TV News Archive, whose subtitles matched a search for the ministry, health officials or a Hamas label. That covers the BBC News channel from 2017 and CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, PBS and the San Francisco stations that carry ABC, CBS and NBC network news from 2009. Sky News, ITV News and Channel 4 News are counted from 4,370 of their YouTube uploads. Al Jazeera English on air is a random sample.

News channels repeat bulletins through the day. We count each airing, because viewers heard each one, and that is why we give rates beside every total.

In print: 39,422 articles about Gaza. All but 140 were published between 7 October 2023 and 14 November 2026. They come from NewsCord's archive, which collects each outlet's published articles and files them by topic, and we read them from the outlets' own pages. We added 950 earlier articles found by searching each outlet for its reports on Israel's previous assaults on Gaza. We left out live blogs.

Every figure in this piece is about Gaza. Reports from the occupied West Bank cite the Palestinian Authority's health ministry in Ramallah, so we set those citations aside: 969 of them, none labelled. We placed each citation by the place names nearest to it and could not place 109.

The readers were language models made by Anthropic. We set them up for this one task with a written coding sheet and NewsCord's own scripts. Two of them read 25,024 of the passages independently. They read blind: they were given the text of the passage and were not told which outlet it came from or when, though a passage sometimes names its own outlet. Where the two disagreed, a third and stronger model ruled. Two readers agreed on 20,248 passages and the third ruled on 4,776.

The remaining 20,553 passages were read once, because the first reader found no label and no doubt or support line in them and a keyword check agreed. To test that, a second reader re-read a random tenth, 2,102 passages. The first reader had missed a label in 1 of them.

No person has re-read all 45,577 passages. That is why we publish every logged citation, with the words it rests on, so that anyone can check our reading.

A label counts only when it is in the outlet's own voice: the presenter, the reporter or the article. We did not count a label spoken by a guest or an official. Each passage counts once, however many times the label appears in it.

The headline figures count citations that name the ministry. The month by month figures and the doubt and support counts use a wider measure that also includes "health officials" and "health authorities" in Gaza.

Where the record is thin: Reuters, where we could read only 90 citations. The New York Times, where many articles were cut short by its paywall. The three channels counted from YouTube. And the figures from before October 2023 for most outlets: 27 citations for BBC News online, 3 for AP, and 32 between the four American networks. The BBC News channel's 168 and CNN's 253 are large enough to show the change.

The Israel and Yemen figures are keyword counts, not a full reading. We searched those 39,422 articles and the 18,184 programmes dated since 7 October 2023 that we collected from the same outlets. A label there is a party, leader, government or group named as running, controlling or leading the ministry in the same sentence, or as its owner. We read every Yemen citation by hand. We left out one that meant the ministry of Yemen's internationally recognised government, and did not count two where the Houthi label was on a television channel.

The searches for "Labour-run NHS", "Republican-run health" and similar phrases used the Internet Archive's subtitle search, from 2017 to 14 November 2026, on the BBC News channel, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera English and the San Francisco stations that carry ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. It found four BBC News channel programmes. In two, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak said "Labour-run NHS" at Prime Minister's Questions, in October 2019 and April 2024. In the other two, Conservatives said during the 2024 election campaign that Labour runs the NHS, or the health service, in Wales.

No study has measured how far the label changes what an audience believes, and we have not measured it either.

You can download every logged citation in one file (CSV, 15 MB, 46,914 rows). The tables on this page are below.