Following our complaints last week, the Guardian amended three articles that promoted the hoax that “14,000 babies” in Gaza would die within the next two days.
As we noted in a post last week, multiple British outlets, including the Guardian, immediately parroted the unevidenced claim by Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at UNOCHA, on BBC’s Radio 4 that “there are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them” and provide baby food.
Despite the fact that Fletcher didn’t provide any evidence to back up his allegation, the “14,000 dead babies” lie made its way to Parliament, where it was promoted by the British foreign secretary and thirteen MPs.
Though the claim began to unravel that same day, by the next day, it was clear that Fletcher had lied.
Despite that fact, media outlets continued peddling variations of the libel – which you can see in our X thread on the hoax. The Guardian, which, of course, has been the most aggressive purveyor of this libel, did respond to our complaint, amending three of their early articles to note that Fletcher’s accusation was false.
Their May 20 article “First Thing: UN says 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in next 48 hours under Israeli aid blockade”, has an editor’s note in the first sentence directing readers to the footnote:
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told the BBC this morning that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time [see footnote].
Here’s the footnote:
A video report that same day (“Aid trucks trickle into Gaza while airstrikes continue – video report”) also draws attention to the editor’s footnote in the caption:
Footage from Gaza shows thousands of people scrambling to get food outside a soup kitchen while only five aid trucks have been allowed into Gaza after an 11-week blockade. The UN says 14,000 babies will die in the next 48 hours if the aid does not reach them in time [see footnote].
It then includes the same footnote:
Finally, a May 24 op-ed by Mustafa Bayoumi (“The shooting of Israeli embassy staffers was a stupid and horrific attack“) also directs readers to the editor’s note:
This stupid and horrific act must be opposed not only for its immorality but also because the world needs to focus on pressuring Israel to end its blockade of Gaza and allow the flow of humanitarian aid into the besieged territory before tens of thousands of Palestinians – including 14,000 babies, according to the United Nations – die from forced starvation in the coming days. [See Footnote]
It also includes the same editor’s note:
Unfortunately, additional Guardian editorials and op-eds which contain the “14,000 dead babies” hoax haven’t been amended.
https://kfitzat.substack.com/p/to-the-editors-who-printed-the-lie
To the editors who printed the lie of 14,000 starving babies
You knew it wasn’t true.You printed it anyway.
Fourteen thousand Gaza infants, starving to death within 48 hours. No source. No context. No verification. Just a number pulled from the fog and handed to the BBC by a UN official who later admitted it was a projection over twelve months, not a death count. A maybe. A model. A myth.
But you didn’t wait. You ran it as fact. You sold it as urgency. You turned it into banners, push alerts, Instagram tiles. A famine that didn’t happen, shouted from every screen.
You didn’t stumble. You didn’t miss a nuance. You made a choice. To believe a terror regime. To dress up propaganda as compassion. To make Hamas sound like UNICEF.
You did this because it felt good. Because it made Israel into the monster you needed it to be. Because rage gets clicks and facts get buried.
You ignored the correction. You buried the clarification. You never explained that the number was fantasy. You just moved on, like hit-and-run drivers.
You turned lies into currency. And you spent it freely.
This isn’t journalism. This is betrayal. Of your readers. Of the truth. Of the dead.
On October 7, Hamas stormed the border. They slaughtered 1,200 people. They burned families alive. They raped women beside their children. They took babies. They dragged the elderly into tunnels. They filmed it.
And you’ve spent the months since trying to tell the world that Israel is the problem. That the country trying to rescue hostages from beneath schools and hospitals is the aggressor. That the death cult hiding behind its own children is somehow the victim.
You fell for Hamas’s lies again and again. Or worse. You didn’t fall. You leapt.
You ran images from Syria. From Iraq. From staged photo shoots in Saudi Arabia. You showed empty pots and claimed famine. You shared graves and called it mourning. You cropped markets and called them ghost towns. Each time the lie spread, you watched. And said nothing.
You didn’t get it wrong. You made it wrong.
You became the mouthpiece of men who celebrate the murder of Jews. You quoted them like scholars. You platformed them like saints.
You wouldn’t print casualty figures from ISIS. But Hamas? You run their numbers on page one.
Why not quote someone who knows the region? Who speaks Arabic or Hebrew? Why not Khaled Abu Toameh? Why not Yossi Klein Halevi? Why not Einat Wilf or Lyn Julius? Because they wouldn’t give you what you want.
They would tell you that Hamas is not a liberation movement. That it is an extermination project. That its charter is not a policy document. It is a call to genocide.
And that doesn’t make for good optics.
You’ve poisoned the public. You’ve abandoned the truth. You’ve made it harder for people to tell fact from fiction. You’ve made it easier for hatred to spread.
So here it is. Retract it. Not just the headline. The instinct.
Admit what you did. Admit you ran with a number because it suited the mood. Admit you cared more about outrage than accuracy. Admit you printed a blood libel in real time.
And if you can’t do that, then don’t call yourself a journalist. Call yourself what you are.
A narrator for the mob. A salesman for the lie. A mask for the oldest hatred on earth.