The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) announced last week that it was reviewing how it documented journalists killed in the Gaza Strip “after militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published obituaries identifying as combatants individuals previously listed by CPJ as journalists.” Recent official statements by Hamas and PIJ claiming “journalists” as fighters have apparently forced the issue.
The announced review is welcome. But will it be enough to restore CPJ’s credibility?
CPJ has been tracking the number of journalists killed in the conflict between Israel and Hamas since Oct. 13, 2023. In each of 2023, 2024 and 2025, it released reports decrying the increased killing of journalists. In the latter two cases, CPJ emphasized that the majority of deaths were caused by Israel.
Importantly, CPJ isn’t just any watchdog; its reports are repeated throughout the mainstream media, making it a news source.
According to Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the flawed CPJ data was mentioned more than 100 times by The New York Times, CNN and Reuters between Oct. 7, 2023, and the end of June 2026. Will any of these outlets go back and issue corrections?
The Washington Post was not included in Goldberg’s list. But in February, the Post published an article uncritically amplifying CPJ’s claim that a record number of journalists were killed during 2025 and that two-thirds of them had been killed by Israel.
The Post included Israeli statements disputing CPJ’s charges, but for the most part amplified both CPJ’s charges and its incendiary rhetoric. For example, without citing evidence, the Post summarized CPJ’s accusation, that “[t]he press freedom group determined that 47 of the journalists killed last year were deliberately killed for their work.”
This language is adapted from CPJ’s website, which asserted that the journalists killed in 2025 marked “the highest number of journalists deliberately killed for their work in the past decade.”
The Post never presented any evidence to support such an attribution of a specific intent. Instead, the story amplified CPJ’s press release, offering a one-sided condemnation of Israel. The condemnation was based on the accumulated data that purport to show that Israel is systematically targeting journalists.
The problem is that the individual data points may not be correct.
Consider the April 7, 2025, killing of Hilmi al-Faqaawi, which exposes CPJ’s fallibility.
CPJ still describes the strike that killed Faqaawi: Hilmi al-Faqaawi, a social-media manager for the pro-Palestinian Islamic Jihad broadcaster Palestine Today TV, was killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a tent in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis at around 1:25 am on April 7, 2025.
Faqaawi was classified as a “social-media manager” who was “murdered,” and said Israel had “complete impunity” for the killing. These conclusions are based on CPJ’s self-proclaimed “rigorous verification process.”
But there’s a complication.
Last month, PIJ admitted that al-Faqaawi was a military commander in its ranks. Notably, he was killed in a strike that targeted another confirmed terrorist posing as a journalist, Hassan Eslaiah.
Apparently, CPJ believes in “complete impunity” for members of internationally designated terrorist organizations so long as they call themselves “journalists.”
As CPJ reviews the information from Hamas and PIJ, presumably, more individuals will be accurately classified as combatants.
Whatever changes CPJ makes to its database, it’s getting a late start on the process of undoing the propagandistic damage caused by the failure of its “rigorous verification process.”
In December of last year, the Amit Terrorism and Intelligence Research Institute determined that 60% of those journalists reported killed in the war with Hamas were members of a terror group. Researchers like Gabriel Epstein, Salo Aizenberg and Joe Truzman have uncovered dozens of such examples with open-source research.
CPJ’s certitude in accusing Israel of “murdering” journalists has persisted long after information was available indicating that they were indeed combatants. The organization never double-checked its findings. Its failure to correct its initial findings promptly should negatively impact its credibility going forward.
But there are other indications that CPJ cares little for its credibility. It recently reaffirmed that it will consider “those working with media organizations affiliated with militant groups, provided they are not engaging in combat,” to be journalists deserving of protection as long as they are not “engaging in combat or inciting imminent violence.”
As CAMERA has previously noted, this definition would include “propaganda operatives for a designated terror organization” as journalists. Or, put another way, “The CPJ, CNN, BBC and others are telling us that their reporters are functionally equivalent to terrorist operatives and propagandists … .”
This not only erodes the professionalism and credibility of the profession itself but also endangers legitimate journalists. The laws of armed conflict work to clearly distinguish between civilians and combatants. Hamas, PIJ, and now, CPJ instead work to mix them together.
Even if CPJ improves the accuracy of its database, its overly broad definition of a journalist ensures that it cannot fully recover its credibility.
