Paul Harrington against Stuff

Stuff published an article October 20, 2025, titled Israel launches air strikes on Gaza after ‘Hamas fired on troops’.

This was a story from The Telegraph about Israeli air strikes on Gaza which threatened to break a ceasefire. There were two different versions of the story. The latter, which was updated as further information came to hand ran under the headline Israel reaffirms commitment to ceasefire after strikes on Gaza.

Paul Harrington complained the story was biased and breached Media Council Principle (1) Accuracy, Fairness and Balance. The article “provides no less than 12 statements from Israeli or US sources, and two from Palestine, one of which refers to “the terrorist organisation”.

“The article really only tells it from one side and the acceptance of this in the media community is just totally unacceptable. This is influencing the NZ community. I'm also very tired of hearing how complex it is. I personally think that convincing the world that things are complicated is one of the greatest successes of Israel's propaganda efforts - and the way the Telegraph swallowed it all and Stuff passed it on only highlights that. There's plenty of balanced journalism around, writing that doesn't choose particular words to sway the narrative (targets vs attacks, government vs regime, warns vs threatens, fired rockets vs carried out airstrikes), it's just a real shame ordinary kiwis aren't generally exposed to it.”

In response Stuff said it understood Mr Harrington’s concerns about perspectives in reporting on this conflict.

“The article in question is a news report covering breaking developments, and as such, it draws heavily on statements made by officials from the Israeli Defence Forces and the US State Department, as well as the official response from Hamas.”

“All claims and allegations are clearly attributed to the relevant sources, consistent with our obligations under the Stuff Editorial Code of Practice and the Media Council’s principle of accuracy. While we acknowledge that this article contains more material from Israeli and US sources than from Palestinian ones, we also note that balance is not always achieved within a single article especially in the context of fast-moving and complex international events. Our commitment is to ensure that fairness and balance are evident across our wider reporting over time.”

Media Council Principle (1) Accuracy, Fairness and Balance says that with long-running issues, where every side of an issue or argument cannot reasonably be reported on every occasion, balance is to be judged on a number of stories.

This is one of many articles published on the Gaza war over the past two years and while, on its own, it is heavily reliant on statements and comment from the Israeli side, this story needs to be seen as part of the overall coverage that Stuff has given to the conflict.

The Council also notes the difficulties of war reporting where reliable information can be hard to obtain and verify and with the Gaza conflict major international news agencies have been covering the war without being able to send their own reporters into Gaza.

As stated previously the Media Council also notes that New Zealand media are, of necessity, dependent on major news agencies and other outlets for their international news coverage and different sources inevitably provide differing perspectives and emphasis.  

The Media Council does not believe this story provides evidence to show that Stuff’s coverage has not been balanced over time.

Decision: No grounds to proceed.