'I'm Unconvinced By Every Term I Draw On In My Reporting'

Honest Reporting/Backspin
10 February '10

The problem: You and your Hamas colleagues are de facto rulers of Gaza after seizing the strip in a bloody coup more than two years ago.

But you feel delegitimized by news services which continue to describe Hamas as "the deposed government" because Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the national unity government and appointed Salam Fayyad to replace Ismail Haniyeh as Prime Minister.

The solution: Formally ban media references to the Hamas as Gaza's "deposed government."

Well, Hamas did just that, leaving Palestinian journalists stuck in the middle. Fares Akram of Xinhua describes the situation in a remarkably frank dispatch:

Fed up with the description, the deposed Hamas Information Ministry last month issued a statement aimed at "defining the accurate idioms and explaining the confusion in some of the terms in use."

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