Christiane Amanpour’s on-air observation that Israeli hostages have “probably” been treated better than the average Gazan because they were used as Hamas’s bargaining chips landed like a grenade in the center of a raw, two-year tragedy. Her line was clipped and weaponized across social media, and viewers rightly smelled the moral arrogance: treating victims as data points while minimizing the suffering inflicted by terrorists is unacceptable from anyone claiming to be a serious journalist.

Faced with the blowback, Amanpour issued a public statement saying she regretted the phrasing and called the remark “insensitive and wrong,” but the apology hardly erased the damage. Words matter, and when an influential news anchor frames kidnapped Israelis and starving Gazans in the same breath she risks equating victim and victimizer — a false equivalence conservatives have spent years fighting in the media.

Not surprisingly, conservative voices and hosts lit into Amanpour, and Megyn Kelly’s program devoted a hard-hitting segment to the episode with Batya Ungar-Sargon joining the chorus of criticism. Those on the right see this as yet another example of elite media arrogance — a senior anchor speaking from a perch of presumed moral superiority while missing the human reality of rape, murder and kidnapping perpetrated by Hamas.

This isn’t an isolated slip; it’s part of a pattern where mainstream outlets too often posture as neutral “experts” while cozying up to narratives that excuse or explain away Islamist terror. Amanpour’s long career includes moments of commendable reporting, but it also includes controversial judgments that feed the perception of bias — and when the news world leans left, conservative audiences rightly ask who’s standing for the victims.

Let’s be brutally clear: Hamas kidnapped civilians on October 7 and used them as bargaining chips, and Israel has struggled to bring those people home amid a savage war that has also devastated Gaza’s innocent population. Pointing out the suffering of Gazans does not mean glossing over the horrors Hamas inflicted on Israelis; any media figure who blurs that distinction does a disservice to truth and the families of the kidnapped.

Patriotic readers should expect better from our major outlets — accountability, not equivocation. If the press cannot tell victims from villains or is quick to moralize without context, it’s no wonder trust in institutions is collapsing; conservatives will keep calling out that failure until the media starts reporting with the clarity and moral seriousness the world’s tragedies demand.