A watchdog investigation has traced the widely cited lists of "journalists" killed in Gaza back to a Palestinian media union whose leaders openly celebrate terrorists, raising hard questions about how international press-freedom groups let their databases become propaganda tools.
The Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate, a Ramallah-based organization that lists "struggle against the occupation" among its core missions, has served as a primary data source for the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists as both groups compiled their running tallies of reporters killed during the Gaza conflict, the Washington Free Beacon reported, citing an investigation by the media watchdog HonestReporting obtained exclusively by the outlet.
HonestReporting's audit found that PJS is cited for information about 58 individuals on CPJ's database of slain Gazan media workers, 26.6 percent of the 218 names CPJ reviewed. Nine of those 58 have since been removed. And a separate HonestReporting review in late August determined that CPJ's list still includes at least 120 names linked to Hamas and other terror factions out of 209 total, well over half.
Neither CPJ, IFJ, nor PJS responded to the Free Beacon's requests for comment.
PJS president Nasser Abu Bakr doubles as a senior vice president of the Brussels-based IFJ, the world's largest press advocacy group, and reportedly sits on the Revolutionary Council of the Fatah Party, the main parliamentary body of the Palestinian government's largest faction. HonestReporting describes him as "a proponent of violence more broadly" and a leader who has publicly posted "martyr posters" for deceased terrorists, hailing them as heroes for killing Jewish civilians.
Abu Bakr's Arabic-language Facebook posts, unearthed by the watchdog, paint a picture that is difficult to square with any claim of journalistic neutrality. In July 2022, he eulogized Ghassan Kanafani, a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
"On the anniversary of the martyrdom of journalist, writer and thinker Ghassan Kanafani, one of the most prominent pillars of Palestinian national journalism, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate renews its loyalty to those who wrote in blood for Palestine, raised the Palestinian national flag high, and remained faithful to the covenant with the homeland."
In April 2024, Abu Bakr mourned Walid Daqqa, a PFLP cell commander, on Facebook. In January 2023, he described the "Fatah army in Gaza" as "ready to confront Netanyahu's new fascist government." And later that year, he issued a statement backing violence coming out of Jenin:
"Jenin and its heroic camp continue to offer up their finest young heroes for the freedom and independence of Palestine. Netanyahu, the intruder on this land, will fall, and Jenin will defeat him, and the people of the land, which is kneaded with the blood of the honorable, will defeat him."
This is the man who helps decide which names go on the international community's official lists of slain journalists. The pattern of media institutions deferring to sources with deep ideological commitments, and then presenting the result as objective record-keeping, is not unique to this story. Sen. John Fetterman has publicly accused outlets of pro-Hamas bias in their Israel coverage, a charge that gains new weight when the underlying data itself comes from an organization that celebrates terrorists.
Abu Bakr is not alone. The PJS Gaza branch head, Luay Nahed Mohammed al-Ghoul, has his own record of public support for convicted and deceased militants. Al-Ghoul issued support on social media for Marwan Barghouti, who is serving a life sentence for orchestrating terror plots carried out by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. In April, al-Ghoul praised Khalil al-Wazir, the Fatah co-founder and military wing leader described as the architect of the First Intifada and cross-border raids from Lebanon.
HonestReporting's report also documents PJS's institutional actions. In December 2022, after former al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades leader Nasser Abu Hamid died in prison, PJS called on Palestinian media to dedicate coverage to imprisoned terrorists. Months earlier, PJS had sent a delegation to a protest at Gaza Red Cross headquarters calling for the release of terrorists, carrying posters bearing the faces of militants and logos of terrorist organizations.
PJS states on its own website that it "will not engage in any programs or relationships, nor adopt any positions, that promote normalization with the occupying state." That is not the language of a neutral press union. It is the language of a political actor.
The IFJ states on its website that it works "closely with its affiliate, the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate to verify information in real time" before adding names to its list of slain Gaza journalists. That partnership gave PJS direct influence over a database that Western governments, newsrooms, and human rights groups treat as authoritative.
HonestReporting's investigation characterizes PJS as "the wellspring from which international journalism organizations wet their lips before slandering Israel with the narrative that the IDF deliberately targets journalists." The watchdog group concluded:
"It has used larger mainstream journalist rights organizations to launder its allegations and pass off terrorists as journalists, and help these operatives try to strike one last blow against Israel by using their deaths as ammunition."
The consequences of that laundering are already visible. The Free Beacon previously reported that IFJ quietly erased eight confirmed terrorists from its list with no public acknowledgment. CPJ, meanwhile, is now conducting what is described as a "wholesale review" of its own database, a review that came only after outside scrutiny, not internal diligence. The organization reportedly descended into internal turmoil after the Free Beacon's earlier reporting on the issue.
Questions about how journalist casualty figures are compiled matter beyond the bureaucratic level. Those numbers shape international pressure campaigns, diplomatic negotiations, and media coverage of the conflict. When AP News reported that five journalists, including AP freelancer Mariam Dagga, were killed in Israeli strikes on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in August 2025, major news organizations issued a joint letter expressing outrage. Israel called the strike a "tragic mishap" targeting a Hamas surveillance camera. The identification of who qualifies as a journalist in a war zone is not an academic exercise; it carries legal and moral weight under international law.
That weight is precisely what PJS appears to exploit. The syndicate issued an official statement on October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas's attacks on Israeli civilians, claiming that journalists killed in Gaza were victims of a "systematic policy committed by the Israeli occupation against journalists and press institutions." HonestReporting notes that PJS had been pushing this narrative even before the war began, alleging "systematic settler targeting of Palestinian journalists" during fighting in Nablus and claiming reporters were targeted during IDF operations in Jenin "to cover the occupation's crimes."
The broader pattern of institutional media failures, organizations that are supposed to serve as watchdogs instead becoming vehicles for one side's narrative, has surfaced repeatedly in recent years. Outlets have been caught giving disproportionate coverage to certain bias narratives while downplaying others, and the problem extends beyond editorial choices into the sourcing pipelines that feed those choices.
What makes the PJS-CPJ-IFJ pipeline so damaging is its self-reinforcing nature. PJS supplies the names. IFJ and CPJ publish them on lists that carry institutional credibility. Western newsrooms and advocacy groups cite those lists as independent verification. And the cycle repeats, with no one in the chain asking hard questions about the original source.
HonestReporting put the problem bluntly: "It is no wonder that the CPJ and IFJ Gazan journalists lists are rife with terrorists and fake media workers, both organizations have been used to launder a myth created by PJS, whose leadership openly advocates for terrorists with innocent blood on their hands."
The fact that IFJ removed eight terrorists from its list without telling anyone is itself an admission. If the names were legitimate, there would be no reason to remove them. If they were not, there was every reason to explain publicly how they got there in the first place. IFJ did neither. Press accountability debates often focus on the rights of journalists, but the obligations of press institutions to maintain honest records deserve equal attention.
CPJ's belated "wholesale review" may produce corrections. But the damage from years of inflated, terror-tainted casualty lists has already shaped public opinion, fueled anti-Israel resolutions, and given cover to organizations that treat every Palestinian casualty as proof of Israeli war crimes. When media institutions let ideology contaminate their sourcing, the corrections always come too late and too quietly to undo the original harm.
Several open questions remain. How many of the 120 terror-linked names still on CPJ's list were sourced directly from PJS? Did CPJ or IFJ ever independently vet PJS's submissions, or did they take the syndicate's word? And will either organization publicly disclose the results of its review, or quietly scrub names and hope no one notices, as IFJ has already done?
When the people compiling the list of "murdered journalists" are the same people posting tributes to convicted terrorists, the list was never about press freedom. It was about information warfare, and the international press establishment volunteered to carry the ammunition.
