


The video is ‘literally pro-Houthi propaganda,’ the director of a Middle East antisemitism watchdog group told NR.
A Reuters video published after the United States’ attack this month on Yemen’s Houthi rebels aims to explain to viewers who the Houthis are, but instead “whitewashes” the terror group and fails to acknowledge the anti-American, anti-Israel and antisemitic views central to the group’s identity, a prominent Middle East media watchdog says.
The three-minute Reuters video — “Yemen’s Houthi leader defiant despite US military attacks” — published on March 17, two days after President Donald Trump ordered a variety of precision strikes on Houthi targets. The video provides viewers with background information about the Houthis, who have been attacking commercial ships and disrupting international shipping lanes in the Red Sea, as well as their leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi.
Viewers are told that the Houthis movement was formed to fight for the interests of the minority sect of Zaidi Shiites who felt marginalized under Yemen’s former president. Al-Houthi, is described by Reuters as a “fierce commander” who has grown his fighting ranks and built “a sophisticated arsenal that includes drones and ballistic missiles.”
But it’s what the video doesn’t say that most bothers Tamar Sternthal, director of the Israel office of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, or CAMERA.
For one, the video never notes that the U.S. has designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization; President Donald Trump reinstated the designation in January after former President Joe Biden removed it in an attempt at diplomacy.
Maybe more problematic, the video fails to provide any context about the signs, flags, and banners with green and red Arabic letters that appear repeatedly throughout.
Known as the Sarkha, the Houthi motto translates to “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.” Signs, flags, and banners containing the Sarkha appear in at least 14 clips in the video and are on screen for more than a third of the three-minute running time.
“You can’t understand the Houthis without understanding their foundational motto, their ideology,” Sternthal said. “It’s their guiding principle. It explains their essence.”
“It’s not by accident,” she added, that the Sarkha appears on the wall and in the frame of al-Houthi’s propaganda videos.
Sternthal also contends that Reuters treats Iran’s funding of the Houthis as akin to a “he said, she said” when “it’s a fact that they’re Iranian backed.”
The Reuters video clearly states the Houthi and Iranian case: “The Houthis deny being puppets of Iran and say they are fighting a corrupt system and regional aggression. The top commander of Iran’s revolutionary guards said they are independent and take their own strategic and operational decisions.”
But it largely ignores the voices of U.S. leaders, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who say the Houthis are only a threat to commercial shipping because of Iran.
“Iran is helping them make these [weapons],” Rubio said in a March 17 interview. “Iran is providing them the money to do these things, Iran is providing them with targeting information that they can use against us. I mean, without Iran, there is no Houthi threat of this magnitude.”
As for the “sophisticated arsenal” Reuters credits al-Houthi of building, Sternthal argues that he didn’t build it. “Iran supplied them with that arsenal,” she said.
CAMERA also accuses Reuters of failing to acknowledge “less than flattering facts about the Houthis” in the video, including that the terror group has taken aid workers and United Nations staffers hostage. The Houthis, who have gained notoriety for firing missiles at commercial ships with civilian crews, also have a history of torturing prisoners, sentencing people to death on dubious charges, and crucifying, stoning, and flogging them, according to human rights activists.
Sternthal said that when she first saw the Reuters video, she initially questioned if it may have been produced by another organization and accidently appeared on Reuters’ website.
“That’s how extreme it was,” she said. “The fact that all of these elements co-existed together just painted the whole thing as just literally pro-Houthi propaganda.”
After receiving a complaint from CAMERA, Reuters updated a caption on their YouTube page to note that the U.S. has formally designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization. But the outlet doesn’t appear to have made any changes to the video itself.
In a statement to National Review, Reuters said it stands by the video. “We believe the video provides the appropriate context and balance to present all sides of the US and Israeli conflict with the Houthis,” a spokesperson said.
U.S. officials are taking a closer look at the planning of the U.S. strikes on the Houthis after it was revealed this week that Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic, was inadvertently included in a Signal chat between top Trump administration officials about the attack.
This isn’t the first time CAMERA has raised concerns about Reuters’ work — the watchdog has flagged more than 90 allegations of anti-Israel and anti-American bias against Reuters over the last two decades, according to its website. Over just the last year, CAMERA has called out Reuters for falsely accusing Israel of starting the war against Hamas terrorists, underreporting Israeli fatalities, and falsely identifying Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital.
In early March, Reuters withdrew a story it had published about the delayed release of a Palestinian killer from an Israeli prison. Reuters reported that the Israeli victim was a Mossad intelligence officer, but CAMERA determined the man, who was hacked to death with a pickaxe in the early 1990s, was a civilian who never worked with the spy agency.
“That was a really great step,” Sternthal said. “It shows they can do better and they should do better.”