More than half of CPJ’s revised Gaza journalist death list still carries terror-group ties, even after a months-long audit meant to scrub combatants.
The Committee to Protect Journalists spent months reviewing its own casualty database after critics challenged who belonged on it. When the New York-based group finished, it still left a majority of the remaining names linked to terrorist organizations, according to an independent review by the Israeli media watchdog HonestReporting.
Washington Free Beacon reporting laid out the gap: CPJ removed some confirmed combatants, then kept scores of others with documented ties to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and related outfits, while blaming Israel for 191 journalist and media-worker deaths since the October 7, 2023 war began.
HonestReporting examined the rejiggered list and found the cleanup incomplete. The watchdog’s review said 102 of 191 people still on the roster have demonstrable connections to terrorist groups, 53 percent.
HonestReporting produced a 138-page review of CPJ’s work. It did not treat the audit as a full reckoning.
HonestReporting stated:
"Although the CPJ review removed almost two dozen individuals who participated in combat during the war that began on October 7, 2023, 53 percent of those still listed have terrorist ties, with CPJ failing to remove identified terrorists and even reinstating some to the database."
The same review said CPJ continues to include members of non-military wings of terrorist groups and has not apologized for spreading disinformation. At least 30 names still on the list are terrorists identified by “martyr notices.” Another 18 are designated terrorists by the Israel Defense Forces. Ten more were identified through family statements and unverified documents. Nearly 60 remaining names include people who worked for media outlets affiliated with known terrorist organizations.
HonestReporting told the Free Beacon the problem runs deeper than a few bad entries.
HonestReporting said:
"It’s time the CPJ properly examined the flaws in its own methodology, as no such self-examination or reflection appear in this audit."
And:
"Gaza’s media ecosystem has been contaminated by proximity to Hamas and its allies. This is something CPJ simply refuses to admit despite being shown, repeatedly, to be complicit in helping the system to perpetuate while placing the blame on Israel."
CPJ first announced a wholesale review in June after Free Beacon reporting questioned the integrity of its “Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza War” list. A confidential version of the group’s audit went out internally on July 7. CPJ later said the review would finish in July and publicly disclosed findings late last week relative to the Free Beacon’s October 1 account.
The public audit said CPJ removed 19 terrorists and three other fake journalists. It also reinstated four people previously dropped for engaging in terrorism against Israel. The rejiggered database totals 191 supposed Gazan journalists and media workers. CPJ concluded Israel was responsible for those 191 deaths in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories since October 7, 2023.
Among the four reinstated, HonestReporting found two with terrorist connections. One is Assad Shamlakh, whom Palestinian Islamic Jihad confirmed as a member of its Gaza Brigade’s Al-Sabra and Tel Al-Hawa Battalion. Another is Mohamed Khaireddine, who worked for Al-Aqsa TV, a Hamas-controlled outlet sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury.
Other names stayed put. Ibrahim Sheikh Ali, described as a platoon commander in the Central Brigade of PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigades, was shuffled between “media worker” and “journalist” classifications and remained listed. Ahmed Abu Mhadi, described as a fighter in the Northern Brigade of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, was reviewed and not removed.
HonestReporting also flagged PIJ Central Military Media Unit members Mohammad Abu Sharia and Mohamed Jamal Sobhi Al-Thalathini. CPJ retained both despite notices published July 16 and August 14 identifying them as members of the organization.
HonestReporting summed up CPJ’s standard this way: individuals can remain classified as journalists even if they belong to a terrorist organization, provided they are not considered members of its military wing or otherwise engaged in combat.
In July, CPJ’s board voted 17-1 to affirm its definition of who counts as a journalist. The sole no vote came from the Fox News representative on the board. Board vice chair Lydia Polgreen, a New York Times columnist, said the board “voted to affirm our definition of who is a journalist.”
Under that approach, organizations affiliated with militant groups meet the criteria of a legitimate journalistic outlet “provided they are not engaging in combat or inciting violence in a manner likely to have imminent effect.”
CPJ later amended its methodology language. It now says it “considers individuals to be engaging in combat if they have active membership in the military or a militant wing of a state or non-state actor, or if they engage in acts of violence.” CEO Jodie Ginsberg said determinations rest solely “on whether individuals meet our definitions of who we consider to be a journalist, not an individual’s affiliation or views.”
That framing treats affiliation as secondary. Critics say it is exactly how operatives stay on a press-casualty list while Israel takes the blame for their deaths.
CPJ would not engage the HonestReporting findings beyond a short reply. The group told the Free Beacon “all relevant information is available on our website.” Its audit also said CPJ needs to “improve its data handling and presentation and increase the searchability of its website CPJ.org.” The auditor who ran the internal review was unnamed and had previously worked for CPJ and as a journalist in Gaza.
On Thursday relative to the Free Beacon report, the Israel Defense Forces published a dossier on 170 supposed Gaza journalists it described as terrorist operatives. The file included people who at one time or another worked for Al Jazeera, Reuters, the Associated Press, CNN, the BBC, and other Western outlets. Israelis pointed to documentary proof such as martyr posters, photos, and Hamas payroll and membership records.
The IDF stated:
"Individuals presented as innocent journalists were, in fact, militants in the military wings of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other terrorist organizations."
And:
"They presented themselves as legitimate media professionals while serving terrorist organizations that regularly use propaganda and psychological warfare."
The IDF posted a direct challenge on X: “You might want to update your list.”
The same day, CPJ doubled down. On X, the group wrote: “Israel has been targeting and killing journalists in connection with their reporting for decades, and this deadly pattern must end.”
One name still on CPJ’s revised list is Anas al-Sharif. Polgreen has called him “a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist” who was “assassinated” by Israel and “a young man who had suddenly become the face and voice of the desperate people of his homeland, Gaza.” She also said Israel had “no credible evidence” for its case. The Free Beacon reported that IDF material on al-Sharif included a photo of him hugging Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commander and October 7 mastermind.
CPJ’s own history with contested Gaza claims is not new. In May, the group served as a critical source for a Nicholas Kristof New York Times column alleging Israeli soldiers raped two Palestinian “journalists.” Free Beacon scrutiny of the casualty list followed, and CPJ launched the review that has now drawn HonestReporting’s rebuke.
Former board member Nika Soon-Shiong, daughter of pharmaceutical billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, publicly said she was removed from the board during an argument over a Free Beacon article about the list.
CPJ presents itself as a guardian of reporters. Its revised roster still functions as an indictment of Israel while retaining people HonestReporting and the IDF identify as terrorists or terror-linked media operatives.
The sequence is plain. Outside reporting forced a review. The review removed some combatants. The board locked in a definition that keeps militant-affiliated outlets eligible. Names flagged by martyr notices, PIJ confirmations, Hamas-controlled television work, and an IDF dossier remained. CPJ’s public message stayed fixed on Israeli culpability.
HonestReporting’s core charge is methodological. If membership in a terrorist organization does not disqualify someone from a “journalist” death count so long as CPJ decides the person was not in a military wing or caught in a violent act, the list will keep absorbing the propaganda apparatus built around Hamas and PIJ. That is the standard CPJ defended. That is the standard the numbers still reflect.
Western newsrooms that once employed some of the same names now sit one degree away from a casualty narrative that mixed press work with terror infrastructure. CPJ had months to separate the two. HonestReporting says more than half the list still fails that test.
When a press-freedom group polices its own roll of the dead and still leaves terrorists in the count, it is not protecting journalism. It is laundering a war narrative.
