The year 2025 is drawing to a close on the Gregorian calendar, which can only mean one thing: it’s time once again for HonestReporting’s Dishonest Reporter of the Year Awards – our annual exercise in recognizing the journalists, broadcasters and media institutions who have worked tirelessly to ensure the public is misinformed, misled, or emotionally manipulated in the most industrious ways possible.
Unlike the hideously drawn-out Academy Awards—where one must endure hours of sanctimony about climate change and so on from people who flew in on private jets—we are not sadists. We go straight for the jugular.
Which brings us, immediately, to the main event.
So, without further ado, the winner of the Dishonest Reporter of the Year 2025 Award is… the BBC.
This should surprise no one. 2025 was the British Broadcasting Corporation’s annus horribilis – though it is becoming difficult to remember when the annus was anything else. Barely a week passed this year without the Beeb finding itself embroiled in some fresh scandal, apology or hastily-added clarification.
The rot set in early. February saw the BBC forced to pull its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone after it emerged that the narrator—the emotional centerpiece of the film—was the teenage son of a Hamas minister and that his mother had been paid by the production company responsible for the program. An unfortunate oversight, one might say, if one were feeling charitable.
Then came the subtitling. A closer review revealed that where Gazan interviewees spoke of “Jews” and pledged to fight “jihad,” BBC editors thoughtfully translated this into the more palatable “Israelis” and the soothingly vague “resistance,” presumably on the grounds that British viewers might find murderous Jew-hatred and holy war a touch less sympathetic.
By May, the BBC’s Radio 4 Today program—famously “setting the day’s agenda”—had set off another fire alarm. UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher was invited on air and promptly announced that “14,000 babies could die in Gaza within 48 hours.” He repeated it. The presenter offered minimal pushback. The implication that Israel was about to carry out the mass killing of Gazan babies hung heavily in the studio air.
The UN’s humanitarian chief claims, without providing evidence, that 14,000 Gazan babies could die in the next 48 hours.
That would be some 27% of the total alleged death toll for this entire war. All babies. All within 48 hours.
This is how anti-Israel libels are spread. https://t.co/io5FJ80Eew pic.twitter.com/FlVqbNXnNh
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 20, 2025
The claim was, of course, absurd. Which is precisely why it ricocheted through BBC output for the next two days like a journalistic norovirus. The line appeared in multiple BBC stories, spreading to other international media outlets. Eventually, after the damage was done, the BBC quietly clarified and edited. Mission accomplished.
And still, things worsened.
June brought apologies and internal “learning exercises” after the BBC failed to cut a live Glastonbury broadcast of a pop-punk duo gleefully chanting “Death, death to the IDF.” July delivered a leaked Zoom call in which the BBC’s CEO of News, Deborah Turness, earnestly explained that Hamas’ “military” and “political” wings should be considered distinct entities – a distinction familiar only to terrorist apologists and the BBC editorial board.
From August onwards, the apologies blurred into one another. Then came November – and the storm of storms. A leaked internal dossier laid bare the scale of the BBC’s bias, not merely on Israel but across its coverage as a whole, confirming what critics had long argued: that editorial distortion was not just a bug but a feature embedded in newsrooms from London to Jerusalem.
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The year concluded with the double resignation of Turness and BBC Director General Tim Davie – an institutional bow on a year of spectacular self-inflicted damage.
And so, with consistency, creativity, and a truly heroic disregard for accuracy, the BBC has more than earned its prize.
Congratulations.
Primetime (Non)Apology Award: Christiane Amanpour
She has had to do it so many times now that one might reasonably expect Christiane Amanpour to have perfected the art of the televised apology. You would think she might have learned how to deliver a “sorry” that sounds vaguely sincere; how to align facial expression with script; how to avoid looking as though she is being forced to read a hostage note written by her producer and displayed on the teleprompter, with a gun trained on her just out of shot.
Alas.
Despite a long and distinguished career punctuated by periodic, mandatory contrition, Amanpour still hasn’t quite grasped the mechanics of public remorse – particularly when Israel is involved. Over the years, she has been compelled to apologize for a series of unscripted “analytical” flourishes, including her on-air description of the murder of Rabbi Leo Dee’s family as a gangland-style “shoot-out” in 2023, and her lapse into Hamas-adjacent terminology when she referred to the IDF as the “Israeli Occupation Forces” in 2024.
Practice, it seems, does not make perfect.
So when we tuned into Amanpour’s CNN show when the last living Israeli hostages were being exchanged for Palestinian prisoners, we knew instinctively that another apology was being queued up backstage. The giveaway came when Amanpour mused—quite casually—that Israeli hostages were “probably treated better than the average Gazan,” owing to their value as Hamas “pawns and chips.”
It was an arresting moment. We rewound the clip. Then rewound it again. Surely not. But yes. That is what she said.
So we did what we do best: called it out publicly, lodged a formal complaint with CNN, and then sat back to watch as the anti-Amanpour social media storm gathered speed. All that remained was to wait for the ritual cleansing.
It arrived later that same evening. There was “regret.” There was talk of remarks being “insensitive and wrong.” There was the familiar vocabulary of editorial damage control, delivered with a veneer of solemnity.
And yet.
Something about it didn’t quite land. Perhaps it was the insouciant shrug. Perhaps the emphasis on all the wrong syllables. Perhaps the insistence that, “like everyone,” she had also been “horrified” by the suffering of the hostages. Or perhaps it was simply the overwhelming sense that we had heard this exact apology before, delivered in much the same tone, with the same visible reluctance.
Oh, that’s right. We have.
.@amanpour: The Israeli hostages have “probably been treated better than the average Gazan because they are the pawns & the chips that Hamas had.”
Starved, electrocuted, held in chains & cages underground, forced to dig their own graves.
Is that what she considers being treated… pic.twitter.com/RxNYOhwSF5
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 13, 2025
Sponsored by Qatar Award: Tucker Carlson
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s views on Israel—and Jews—have undergone a remarkable evolution in recent years, remarkable chiefly for how neatly they now contradict his former self.
Once upon a time, Carlson could reasonably be described as a defender of both the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Three decades ago, as a staff writer at The Weekly Standard, he demonstrated a perfectly serviceable understanding of antisemitism. He noted—correctly—that when someone obsessively attacks Israel, fixates on American Jews’ support for Israel, suggests Jews have dragged the United States into wars on Israel’s behalf, or disproportionately targets Jewish institutions, they are probably an antisemite.
Fast-forward to 2025, and Carlson has become precisely the sort of figure he once described, now devoting an extraordinary amount of airtime to attacking Israel and Jews. But that, we are told, is different. It is 2025, after all – a different era, a different moral universe. Antisemitism, Carlson has helpfully explained, is no longer what it used to be. Indeed, when called out on-air for antisemitism, he assured viewers that he doesn’t “even like talking about Israel” anymore, because doing so inevitably leads to such accusations. Accusing him of antisemitism, he added, is “sleazy” and “shameful.”
And yet, for a man who doesn’t like talking about Israel, he spent a great deal of the year doing exactly that.
From hosting Holocaust-denying historians to enjoying chummy tête-à-têtes with neo-Nazi figures such as Nick Fuentes, Carlson returned, again and again, to Israel and Israel-adjacent topics, all while assuring viewers he would much rather be talking about something else.
Which brings us to the more interesting question of 2025: what, one might ask, could have Riyal-ly prompted this volte-face on Israel?
The answer can be found back in January, when Carlson acquired new patrons in the form of the State of Qatar. And once the Qatari riyals began flowing, the mystery rather resolved itself.
The Al Jazeera Defender Award: Sky News
Of all the media organizations in the world, there is one that appears to value a very particular kind of prior experience when hiring journalists. When Al Jazeera advertises for reporters, photographers, editors or videographers, one qualification seems to excite hiring managers above all others: previous or current employment with a terrorist organization.
Groups such as Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, for example.
Nothing says “objective reporting voice” quite like this sort of background. Which is why we are always slightly surprised by the shock when Al Jazeera staff are “unmasked” as terrorists. In truth, the genuinely startling discovery would be finding one who is merely a journalist.
Al Jazeera, then, operates less as a news organization than as a kind of social club for Islamist militants. That is its business. Fine. What is more interesting is when other media outlets rush to defend this arrangement.
Which brings us to Sky News.
Over the summer, Sky distinguished itself by casting doubt on Al Jazeera’s reputation as a recruitment and employment agency for terrorist operatives. When Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif was eliminated in Gaza in August, evidence quickly emerged linking him to Hamas.
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For Sky News, however, membership in a murderous terrorist organization was no barrier to journalistic sainthood. Al-Sharif was described instead as a “crucial reporting voice” whom Israel had allegedly sought to “silence” by killing him.
2/
This is the state of journalism at @SkyNews: A Hamas terrorist-journalist is called a “crucial reporting voice.”IDF evidence of Anas al-Sharif’s Hamas affiliation is disregarded by @DiMagnaySky. pic.twitter.com/IfcVgo0H5j
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 12, 2025
Terrorist. Journalist. Victim. Martyr.
Podcaster of the Year Award: Myron Gaines, Fresh & Fit
We are not entirely sure why Myron Gaines—real name Amrou Fudl—decided to call his podcast Fresh & Fit, given how little time he devotes to discussing either fitness or freshness. One assumes the show was originally intended to dispense lifestyle advice to young men. Instead, it often functions as a kind of Adolf Hitler tribute channel.
It is, admittedly, entertaining to imagine how Hitler might have reconciled his dreams of a white, Aryan utopia with the knowledge that one of his most enthusiastic present-day admirers is a Muslim of Sudanese heritage broadcasting from a Miami studio. History is full of ironies, but this one would surely have tested even the Führer’s imagination.
A recurring obsession on the podcast is the so-called “Jewish Question,” or “JQ,” as Gaines affectionately calls it. He adores this question. There is, in fact, no question he enjoys more. He boasts of hosting the “biggest platform talking about the JQ,” because, as he puts it, “no one else will do it.”
Even when surrounded by a panel of attractive twenty-something female guests—during one July broadcast, for example—Gaines was unable to restrain himself. Rather than discussing dating, masculinity, or indeed anything suggested by the podcast’s title, he returned once again to his favourite topic.
“So what do you guys think about Hitler?” he asked.
It transpired that at least some of his guests were more than happy to join in, agreeing that the solution to the “JQ” was, as one helpfully put it, to “kill the motherf***ers.”
“What if the Jews did something to the Germans”, “Hitler was trying to save the world”, “How do we take [the Jews] down?”, “Genocide.”
This isn’t 1940s Germany — it’s a 2025 podcast.
Suzette, a recent culinary high school grad from south Florida goes full Nazi and Pompano-based… pic.twitter.com/BU0jsB4dWF
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) July 24, 2025
All we can say is that youthful flirtation is not what it used to be.
This is Fresh & Fit’s first appearance in the Dishonest Reporter of the Year Awards. We very much doubt it will be the last.
Gaslighter of the Year: Ms Rachel & Zohran Mamdani
Gaslighting is one of those fashionable terms that we hear a lot. It originates from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light, in which a woman is driven slowly mad by her husband dimming the lights in their home and then calmly insisting nothing has changed. These days, the term is wildly overused.
But sometimes—just sometimes—it fits perfectly.
Which brings us to Rachel Griffin-Accurso, better known as Ms Rachel: the behemoth of YouTube children’s programming who, in 2025, began to look suspiciously like a behemoth of children’s propaganda too.
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This year, Ms Rachel decided that teaching toddlers their ABCs was no longer quite enough. Alongside the sing-alongs came Palestine. Chief among the additions was an appearance by Palestinian photojournalist and personal “friend” Motaz Azaiza – a man who, following Hamas’ October 2023 massacre, called for “resistance,” refused to condemn the slaughter of Israeli civilians, and praised the eliminated Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Given Hamas’ fondness for encouraging children to die as “martyrs,” perhaps this was meant as a teachable moment.
Ms Rachel’s advocacy did not stop with YouTube. She took her newfound expertise on tour, appearing on Amanpour’s program to explain that while she is “not an expert” on Israel or Gaza, she is an expert on child development – and therefore knows that the war in Gaza is “wrong.” That, apparently, was that.
On a separate appearance with previous Dishonest Award alumnus Mehdi Hasan, Ms Rachel lamented how “sad” it was that anyone might criticize her opinions at all. “Silence wasn’t a choice for me,” she explained.
Silence, it seems, was also not a choice when she shared a false story claiming a Gazan child with a degenerative illness had been starved to death. Nor when she accused Israel of “genocide” and posted fake death toll statistics. Nor when she carefully declined to post about any other conflict, famine, or dead children anywhere in the world. Gaza alone demanded her voice.
She is, you see, choice-less.
Ms Rachel does not merely express opinions; she frames disagreement as cruelty, correction as censorship, and her own activism as moral inevitability – shielded at all times by professions of innocence and virtue. She is not political, she assures us. She simply “wants to protect the kids.” That is textbook gaslighting, and it earns her a share of this year’s award.
She does, however, share it.
Tied with her is New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, whose electoral victory was impressive, though not nearly as impressive as his stamina for narrative inversion.
When Mamdani refused to condemn the chant “globalize the intifada,” he turned up at a synagogue in a kippah on Yom Kippur. When he implied his “auntie” was a victim of post-9/11 Islamophobia on the New York subway, it ended up that she was in Tanzania at the time.
Mamdani’s talent lies not in persuasion but in reassurance: reassuring critics that they are overreacting, reassuring supporters that optics trump substance, and reassuring everyone that words don’t mean what they plainly mean.
New York Jews aren’t “overreacting.”
7 reasons New York Jews are sounding the alarm on Mamdani.🧵 pic.twitter.com/gbuIesTL79— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 15, 2025
He is a gaslighter of no small ability.
But even so, he is not quite Ms Rachel.
Better luck next year.
‘You Escaped the Asylum!’ Award: Candace Owens
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Mental health is not something to be treated lightly. It is serious. Which is why we say, with the utmost seriousness, that Candace Owens may wish to consider a professional assessment – and soon.
For any reasonably grounded observer, Owens is not doing particularly well. Indeed, one suspects she is suffering. It is difficult to imagine what it must be like inside her head: a place where be-penised French First Ladies, Hasidic Jews, and Israeli intelligence agents whirl endlessly around the burning ruins of the World Trade Center. It cannot be restful.
Owens’ foray into anti-Israel conspiracy theories did not, however, begin in 2025. She has been circling this territory for some time. This year simply marked the point at which she abandoned any remaining vestiges of credibility and went off the deep end.
She began the year still chewing over one of her favourite obsessions from 2024: the insistence that Israel deliberately attacked and sank the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War. This theory—long debunked, repeatedly investigated, and thoroughly exhausted—provided Owens with enough material to sustain months of content.
Then came the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a university campus in Utah, which provided Owens with fresh material. Despite the swift arrest of a suspect who reportedly objected to Kirk’s views on issues such as transgender rights, Owens announced that she had uncovered the real culprit.
Israel.
According to Owens, Kirk—long a supporter of the Jewish state—was on the verge of turning against it, forcing Israel to act. As evidence, she triumphantly brandished a mobile phone displaying alleged messages between Kirk and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Proof, apparently.
Owens does not investigate; she “asks questions.” She does not expose; she accuses. Each new tragedy becomes a puzzle box waiting for her to open it and reveal Israel lurking inside.
For commitment to conspiracy, for stamina in delusion, and for services to the complete abandonment of plausibility, Candace Owens is a more than deserving recipient of this year’s You Escaped the Asylum! Award.
One can only hope she enjoys it – though, given her state of mind, we suspect she’ll say it was sponsored by Mossad and designed to kill her.
All of the Above Award: The New York Times
Finally—though hardly least—we arrive at a special award devised expressly for its recipient. The All of the Above Award is reserved for the outlet that managed, in a single calendar year, to tick every box we have so carefully laid out above.
This year, The New York Times did not merely tick them. It sprinted past the field.
Dishonest reporting? Check. Who could forget the “starving” Gazan toddler splashed across the paper’s front page – carefully framed to exclude his well-fed brother standing just behind?
Non-apologies? Check. Not so much a refusal to apologize as a serene indifference to the very concept. The Times does not so much correct itself as wait for everyone to move on.
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Gaslighting? Naturally. This is the paper whose supposedly pro-Israel opinion pieces increasingly read as if they were subcontracted to activists from Jewish Voices for Peace.
Think of this, then, as a kind of lifetime achievement award – one bestowed not for a single lapse or scandal, but for sustained excellence in getting almost everything wrong while remaining utterly convinced of one’s own virtue.
Incredible work, New York Times. Truly.
Finally…
And that concludes this year’s Dishonest Reporter Awards. We’re impressed you made it to the end.
Please do share it. After all, it would be a shame if our winners never found out they’d won.
This article is dedicated in loving memory of Gidon Ben-Zvi, the author of last year’s Dishonest Reporter Awards.
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