Hamas admits it ‘deported’ reporters who filmed rocket launches, intimidated ‘immoral’ press

A Hamas official admits that the group strong-armed journalists in Gaza into a reporting style that better fit their narrative, keeping many under surveillance and kicking out of the territory those who filmed the launching of rockets at Israel.

“These journalists were deported from the Gaza Strip,” the head of foreign relations in Hamas’s Information Ministry, Isra al-Mudallal, tells Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen TV. “The security agencies would go and have a chat with these people. They would give them some time to change their message, one way or another.”

http://youtu.be/mVjDiI1xm4U

Al-Mudallal adds that the global media was heavily biased towards Israel throughout the conflict. “The journalists who entered Gaza were fixated on the notion of peace and on the Israeli narrative,” she complains.

“We suffered from this problem very much,” she adds. And therefore, she explains: “Some of the journalists who entered the Gaza Strip were under security surveillance. Even under these difficult circumstances, we managed to reach them, and tell them that what they were doing was anything but professional journalism and that it was immoral.”