(JNS) The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) on Thursday called on major news organizations to revisit their reporting based on casualty data from the Committee to Protect Journalists(CPJ), after the press organization announced a review of its Gaza database following evidence that individuals it had identified as journalists were members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The CPJ announced on June 25 that it was conducting a full review of its database of media workers killed in the Gaza Strip after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad mourning notices confirmed that several individuals listed as journalists were operatives in the terrorist organizations.
CAMERA said the revelations raised serious questions about reporting by major international media outlets that had relied on CPJ’s casualty figures and allegations without sufficient scrutiny.
Among the outlets cited by CAMERA were CBS, the BBC, Reuters, The Washington Post, CNN, The Associated Press, PBS, MS Now (formerly MSNBC) and The New York Times.
“It is the CPJ that has long put journalists at personal risk by enabling terrorists to masquerade as journalists,” said Tamar Sternthal, director of CAMERA’s Research and Analysis Media Department.
She argued that news organizations had too often accepted CPJ’s findings without independently verifying the identities of those listed as journalists.
We took a close look at who those so-called “journalists” killed in Gaza really were. Results below.
Link in the first comment. pic.twitter.com/3459kfw7Ct— עמיחי שיקלי – Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) September 2, 2025
CAMERA also criticized interviews in which CPJ officials accused Israel of deliberately targeting journalists, saying the allegations went unchallenged by interviewers.
“Multiple leading media outlets had featured, often without qualification or challenge, CPJ’s now-discredited data on 2025 fatalities, which described terrorists as journalists killed on assignment,” CAMERA said in a press release.
“Among the media outlets that devoted space last February to CPJ’s tainted tally are CBS, which further inflated CPJ’s inaccurate figures; the BBC, which CAMERA has repeatedly called on to amend outdated CPJ-sourced tallies; Reuters, which gave CPJ a platform to accuse those citing links between supposed journalists and Hamas of “deadly smears”; and The Washington Post.
“Since then, media outlets have repeatedly relied on the organization’s dubious allegations and blatant libels. In April, MS Now’s Antonio Hylton failed to challenge CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg when she insisted on ‘The Weekend Primetime’ that ‘Israel has deliberately targeted journalists’ and that ‘hundreds of journalists have been killed by Israel since the genocide in Gaza.’ The same month, PBS’s Nick Shifrin likewise neglected to challenge CPJ regional director Sara Qudah, who alleged that Israel targets journalists.”
CAMERA added, “CPJ is a favorite in The New York Times’ proverbial rolodex. It loomed large, for example, in an August 2025 article that alleged “the deadly risks of reporting in Gaza could further stifle the amount of information coming out of the war,” but that entirely ignored Hamas’ total control of Gaza’s media landscape—including its successful casting of its terror operatives as journalists.”
According to CAMERA, more than 100 media executives and senior journalists signed a February 2024 CPJ letter accusing Israel of attacking journalists while relying on casualty figures that are now under review.
Sternthal questioned whether the presence of senior executives from leading news organizations on CPJ’s board—including representatives from The Associated Press, Reuters, NBC News, Agence France-Presse and The New Yorker—created an inherent conflict of interest that discouraged critical coverage of the organization.
“Journalists have no business forsaking their profession by failing to critically report about an organization that has effectively covered for terrorists in press vests who endanger actual journalists,” she said.
Nika Soon-Shiong, publisher of the media outlet Drop Site News, suggested this week that she was removed from the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists after objecting to the organization’s review of its database to determine whether some individuals listed as slain journalists were actually terrorists.
CAMERA, founded in 1982, is a media-monitoring organization dedicated to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East.
Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates
