#Committee to Protect Journalists

[odinsblog]

“I first started noticing the journalists dying on Instagram. I'm a journalist, I'm Arab, and I've reported on war. A big part of my community is other Arab journalists who do the same thing.

And when someone dies, news travels fast. Recently, I pulled up the list that the Committee to Protect Journalists has been keeping and looked at it for the first time. There are 95 journalists and media workers on it as of today.

Almost everyone on it is Palestinian. Scrolling through, I started to get angry. These were the people carrying the burden of documenting this whole war.

Israel is not allowing foreign journalists into Gaza, except on rare occasions with military escorts. These people's names are being buried in a giant list that keeps growing. What I want to do is lift some of them off the list for a moment and give you a glimpse of who they were and the work they made.

I'll start with Sadi Mansour. Sadi was the director of Al-Quds News Network, and he posted a 22-second video on November 18. That was a report from the war, but it also gave me a picture into his marriage.

Sadi's wearing his press vest and looks exhausted. He's explaining that cell service and the Internet keep getting cut off, and it's often impossible to text or call anyone, including his wife. So they've resorted to using handwritten letters to communicate while he's out reporting, sending them back and forth with neighbors or colleagues.

He ends the video with a picture of one of these letters from his wife. In it, she writes,

‘Me and the kids stayed up waiting for you until the morning, and you didn't come home. We were really sad.

I kept telling the kids, Look, he's coming. But you didn't show up. May God forgive you.

Come home tomorrow and eat with us. Do you want me to make you kebab or maybe kapse? Bring your friends with you, it's okay.

And give Azeez the battery to charge. What do you think about me sending you handwritten letters with messenger pigeons from now on? Ha ha ha.

I'm just kidding. I want to curse at you, but we're living in a war. Too bad.

Okay, I love you. Bye.’

A few hours after he shared that letter, Sadie and his co-worker Hassouna Saleem were at Sadie's home, when they were killed by an Israeli air strike that hit his house.

His wife and kids, who weren't there, survived.

Gaza is tiny, and the journalist community is really close. Reading the list, you can see all the connections between people. Like with Brahim Lafi.

Brahim was a photojournalist, one of the first journalists to die. He was killed while reporting on October 7. He was just 21, still new to journalism.

On his Instagram, you can see that in his posts just a few years ago, he was still practicing his photography, taking pictures of coffee cups and flowers. Then he started doing beautiful portraits and action shots. You can really feel him starting to become a journalist.

Clicking around on Instagram, I found a tribute post about Brahim from his co-worker Rushdie Sarraj. In this photo, Brahim staring intently at the back of a camera, his face lit up by the light from the viewfinder. He looks so young.

The caption reads, My assistant is gone. Brahim is gone. Rushdie himself was a beloved journalist and filmmaker.

And I know that because he's also on the list. He was killed just two weeks after Brahim. I read the tribute post to him too.

I saw this over and over again. Journalists posting tributes, who were then killed themselves soon after. And a tribute goes up for them.

And then the pattern continues.

Thank you.

Something else I saw over and over on the list, journalists later in the war who had become aware that they could be making their last reports. They'd say it at the beginning of their videos. And those were the hardest to watch, especially when it was true.

One video like that was posted by Ayat Hadduro. Ayat was a freelance journalist and video blogger. Her videos before the war covered a wide range from what I can tell, interviews about women in politics.

She even appeared in a commercial for ketchup-flavored chips. She clearly liked being in front of the camera. Once the war started, Ayat's pivoted to covering bombings and food shortages.

On November 20, she posted a video report from her home. You can hear the airstrikes hitting very close to where she is. It's scary.

‘This is likely my last video. Today, the occupation forces dropped phosphorus bombs on Beit Lahya area and frightening sound bombs. They dropped letters from the sky, ordering everyone to evacuate.

Everyone ran into the streets in the craziest way. No one knows where to go.

But everyone else has evacuated. They don't know where they're going. The situation is so scary.

What's happening is so tough, and may God have mercy on us.’

She was killed later that day.

Targeting journalists, in case you didn't know, is a war crime. So far, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found that three of the journalists on the list were explicitly targeted by the IDF, the Israeli military. Investigations by the Washington Post and Reuters, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have also raised serious questions in these three cases.

And the Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating 10 other killings. When we reached out to the IDF for comments, they said, quote, the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists. That's the answer they always give in these situations.

Meanwhile, dozens of seasoned reporters have fled Gaza. Journalists who worked for Al Jazeera, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, Agence France-Presse. So many media offices were demolished in Israeli airstrikes that the Committee to Protect Journalists stopped counting.

It's not just individual lives that have been destroyed. It's an entire infrastructure.

Thank you.

The name on the list that was hardest for me to look at was Issam Abdullah, because I'd crossed paths with him once. Issam was a Lebanese journalist, a video journalist for Reuters for many, many years. He had just won an award for coverage of Ukraine.

I'm Lebanese and still report there sometimes, and I'd worked with Issam a couple of summers ago. He helped me film a sort of random story in Beirut. I was interviewing this entrepreneur who had started a sperm freezing company after an accident where he spilled a tray of hot coffee on his private area, burning himself.

I know, ridiculous. It was a really silly shoot. Right after we said cut and started to rap, Issam started this whole bit about being in his late 30s, reconsidering his own sperm quality and everything he now realized he was doing to hurt it, and no one could stop laughing.

It was a really good day that felt good to remember and to remember him that way. Issam was killed by the IDF on October 13. His death was one of the three that the Committee to Protect Journalists has identified as a targeted killing.

He was fired upon by an Israeli tank while standing in an empty field on the Lebanon-Israel border with a small group of other journalists. Everyone was wearing press vests with cameras out. They were covering the Hezbollah part of this war.

A few other journalists were injured in the attack, which was captured on video. The IDF says they were responding to firing from Hezbollah, not targeting the journalists. But multiple investigations, including by Reuters, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the AFP, found no evidence of any firing from the location of the journalists before the IDF shot at them.

The journalists in the group and video footage confirmed that there was no military activity near them. I had only met Issam once, barely knew him, but it affected me so much when he died. I know that he understood the risks of his job, but somehow it still felt so random and unfair that he would be struck down like that, following the rules, wearing his press vest and helmet, and a pack of reporters on a sunny day in an open field.

I find myself thinking about him all the time. His last Instagram post was commemorating another journalist, this iconic reporter Shereen Abou Aql who had been killed by the IDF. When I first saw that post in October, I thought how ironic because a week later, Isam also was killed by the IDF.

But then, after spending time reading the list, I realized how common this had become. I still haven't finished going through the list and looking up the people on it. I keep finding things that stick with me, like the funny way this one radio host would cut off a caller who was rambling on for too long.

A tweet from reporter Al-Abdallah that quoted Sylvia Plath. It read, What ceremony of wars can patch the havoc? I'm going to keep going down the list, even though this story is over now.

Just for myself. My own way of bearing witness. Which is, in the end, all that these journalists were trying to do.”

—DANA BALLOUT, The 95. Dana sifts through a very long list—the list of journalists killed in the Israel-Hamas war, and comes back with five small fragments of the lives of the people on it. Dana is a Lebanese-American, Emmy-nominated documentary producer.

[vyorei]

Journalists are at severe risk bringing us information through literal bombs falling, take a moment to read this article and think about these people

Full article here:

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Lahav Harkov

One-third of the Palestinian journalists listed by the Committee to Protect Journalists as being killed in the war in Gaza were employed by terrorist groups, Jewish Insider has learned.

The high number of journalists reported by NGOs killed in Gaza has made headlines in the Washington Post, The New York Times and elsewhere, without any mention of their affiliations with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Out of 100 Palestinian journalists on the list on May 17, 33 worked for “Hamas-affiliated” media, such as Al-Aqsa Voice Radio, Al-Quds Al-Youm, Quds News Network and others. Another two worked for Palestinian Islamic Jihad outlets Kan’an and Mithaq Media Foundation. 

Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV was named a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2010; the outlet employed 13 of those listed by CPJ.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) claims that 105 journalists were killed in Gaza, but only lists 23 of them. Several worked for terrorist organizations’ media outlets, but those affiliations are not listed on the RSF website.

These include Hassouna Salim, the director of the Hamas propaganda arm Quds News; Mohamed Khalifeh, director at Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV; Abdallah Iyad Breis, the lead photographer for the Hamas Education Ministry’s TV channel; and others.

RSF reported that Yasser Mamdouh El-Fady was killed while “reporting on the presence of Israeli tanks near the Al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.” It does not mention that he worked for Islamic Jihad through its Kan’an news agency, which CPJ reported on its list.

CPJ says Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi was shot and killed at the Erez crossing, while RSF said that he was “one of the first reporters to venture out in Gaza on the morning of 7 October.” Other Gazan news photographers who documented Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians have been accused of having foreknowledge of the attack.

Both organizations say that they only included journalists “killed in connection with their work or where there is still some doubt that their death was work-related,” according to CPJ. RSF also noted in a statement to JI that they list journalists “killed in the line of duty or for reasons related to work.”

[nando161mando]

The Committee to Protect Journalists has issued an alert concerning the safety of Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif in Gaza following Israeli threats.

Last week, Israel assassinated Anas’s colleague Ismail Al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi in a targeted drone attack in Gaza.

[incognitajones]

Mexico has for several years been one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. Since the year 2000, 163 journalists have been murdered and another 32 have gone missing, according to British human rights organization Article 19. In 99% of cases, the murders of journalists remain unsolved.

Mexico is the Western Hemisphere’s most dangerous country for journalists, according to extensive documentation by CPJ since 1992. Since the turn of the century, at least 141 journalists and other media workers have been killed... Impunity is the norm in crimes against the press. Mexico is the country with the highest number of disappeared journalists in the world, yet not one case of a disappeared journalist in Mexico has ever led to a conviction.

[drsonnet]

Israel killed yet another Palestinian journalist - now 36.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists “The Israel-Gaza war has become the deadliest period for journalists covering conflict since CPJ began documenting journalist fatalities in 1992.”

[readingsquotes]

More than three quarters of the 99 journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2023 died in the Israel-Gaza war, the majority of them Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza. The conflict claimed the lives of more journalists in three months than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year. .... The 2023 global total – the highest since 2015 and an almost 44% increase on 2022’s figures – includes a record number of journalist killings – 78 – that CPJ research determined were work-related, with eight more still under investigation. Thirteen media workers also were killed last year.  ... Almost all of the journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war were Palestinian, and CPJ has raised concerns about the deliberate targeting of members of the media by the Israeli military. 

Israel-Gaza war brings 2023 journalist killings to devastating high

By Kathy Jones

[themorningnewsinformer]

Three Journalists Among Five Killed in Israeli Strike on Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital

Introduction: Tragic Attack on al-Ahli Hospital Highlights Gaza Crisis On 5 June 2025, an Israeli strike on al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City resulted in the death of five people, including three Palestinian journalists. This devastating attack, condemned internationally, intensifies concerns over civilian safety and press freedom amid ongoing conflict. This blog explores the details of the strike,…

[beenasarwar]

Every day is the time to speak up – in fact, yell out, and loudly demand justice and freedom for reporters

Journalists around the world are increasingly targeted for doing their jobs – and Southasia is no exception. The issue doesn’t just affect journalists. Who wants to visit a country where information can’t be trusted, or invest in a country that can’t guarantee that contracts and investments will be protected? By James McManus / Sapan News Journalists had a tough year in 2024. About 361 were…

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Israel is conducting massacres and mass arrests as it decimates northern Gaza. With journalists and social media activists increasingly targeted and detained, less and less footage is getting out of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign. ⁣

⁣

Israel has killed at least 175 journalists since the start of its genocide. Now, it has labeled six Al Jazeera journalists as “terrorists,” which the network denied, calling Israel’s claims “fabricated accusations as a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region.” ⁣

⁣

The Committee to Protect Journalists said on X, “Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence.” ⁣

⁣

As it silences journalists, Israel has leveled over 10 residential buildings in Jabalia and stormed the north’s only remaining hospital, threatening the lives of about 200 patients trapped inside and conducting mass arrests. ⁣

⁣

One of the journalists targeted by Israel, Anas al-Sharif, wrote, “North Gaza is being wiped out.” ⁣

⁣

Journalist Bisan Owda reacted to the attacks in Jabalia, saying: “No civil defense to grab the people from under the rubble. Nothing. Even journalists. No one to cover this massacre ... the world is complicit in this, is silent on this.” ⁣

⁣

⁣

#Gaza #Jabalia #BeitLahia #Palestine #Palestinian #JournalismIsNotACrime #Journalist #Israel #Hospital

[vyorei]

Another journalist has been murdered.

Yazan Al-Zuweidi. Say his name.

[cleoselene]

from facebook of all places

posted by Jay Michaelson, and sourced by him as well:

Hello! I'm posting in response to the many sincerely anguished claims that not enough is being done to stop Trump. This is not reflected in the facts. - Represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group and State Democracy Defenders Fund, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed suit on Monday against the Treasury Department “for sharing confidential data with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run by Elon Musk.” Go to Public Citizen's website to learn all about this lawsuit, which is very likely to prevail. - On USAID, appearing with other Democratic lawmakers outside USAID offices on Monday, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) shouted, “Elon Musk, you didn't create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people … like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it. And who's going to stop him? We are... This a constitutional crisis that we are in today.” Lawsuits have also been filed in this matter, and are also likely to prevail. - Hakeem Jeffries has announced lawsuits have been filed regarding the firings of inspectors general. - On Jan 21, Democracy Forward, was filed at 12:01 p.m. ET on Monday and accused Elon Musk's DOGE of being a "shadow operation led by unelected billionaires" that flouts federal transparency rules. That should win. - National Security Counselors filed a suit arguing that DOGE meets the requirements to be a federal advisory committee and is therefore legally required to have "fairly balanced" representation, keep regular minutes of meetings and allow public access to meetings. Clearly accurate. - Eighteen state attorneys general and a slew of immigrants' rights groups brought swift legal action against Trump after he signed his executive order seeking to ban birthright citizenship for some children born in the U.S., arguing that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Obviously, clearly unconstitutional. - "Schedule F" has been challenged in court by the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents employees in 37 agencies and departments. - Several immigrant rights groups in the United States, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s ban on asylum claims. - GLAD Law and the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) have sued to stop Trump's ban on trans people in the military. And there are many more - I'll link to a great list of them in the comments. Yes, there are Trump judges in the courts, and if Aileen Cannon types get these cases, Trump may prevail. But most judges are not like her. These actions are clearly illegal and/or unconstitutional, and they WILL be stopped. Just like the tariffs were not meant to prevail -- Trump won that round, "forcing" Canada and Mexico to take "action" on fentanyl -- these actions are not meant to prevail. They're meant to flood the zone with shit, confuse and immobilize us. They said they'd do "Shock and Awe" and that's what they've done. Nothing here should be surprising. Shock and Awe is up to YOU. I am not shocked, I am not in awe. Oh, and the "mainstream media" has reported on all of these. The info above has come from Newsweek, the NY Times, and other mainstream sources. Please stop attacking journalists when we are being threatened by the FBI. Who do you think you're helping by doing that? Stop it with the doomsaying and gloomsaying. Want to make a difference? Give thousands of dollars to Public Citizen, the ACLU, and similar groups. Show up at marches. Put your ass on the line and help protect people from ICE. If you're safe, do simple symbolic things (like changing your social media pictures) to support people who are not safe. Just like we should not obey in advance, we should not panic in advance either. This is not the end of democracy. That is just what the bad guys want you to think. Get over it and fight.

I don't know how many times I've heard "Dems do nothing!" when they are in fact doing a lot of things. You just don't hear about it because the mainstream news doesn't pay attention or you don't see out news beyond your social media feeds.

The other thing is, Dems don't break laws in their fights the way Republicans do. Your desire to turn every Dem POTUS into the Dick Cheney Version of the Executive but then screaming injustice! when the GOP does it -- you see the problem there?

[aronarchy]

[transcripts of the videos (which have been merged in the above upload in the order they were shared in the tweet):

1:

… The amount of risk that journalists in Sudan go through every day just to get information out of Sudan and to other countries is just incredible. The last couple of months, we’ve seen Halima Idris Salim run over by RSF soldiers; we’ve seen journalists being assassinated in their own homes; we’ve seen, just a couple of days ago, Abdelaziz Mahmoud Arja being kidnapped by the RSF for reporting on their genocide against the Masalit tribe. And through all this, we see no solidarity or willingness to protect journalists in Sudan, just radio silence.

And above this as well, we see even MPs trying to defend the UAE like Nadhim Zahawi did two weeks ago, going above and beyond to defend the UAE and the complicity in genocide, and implying that allegations against the UAE supporting the RSF is “Iranian aggression.” And Nadhim Zahawi who used his powers as an MP to pass legislation to recognize the Anfal genocide against the Kurds in Iraq is now going out of his way to defend a complicit party in genocide in Sudan right now. And we might wonder why he goes to such lengths. He was actually a middleman between RedBird IMI and the Barclay family for the potential purchase of the Telegraph by the UAE which just fell…

2:

…, which has been proven by the RSF’s own propaganda videos, that Nimr vehicles have been used by the RSF. MBBA designs anti-aircraft and anti-tank turrets for these Nimr vehicles. These same vehicles with these same turrets are being used against Sudanese, against Africans, in the west in Darfur, being used to kill us, being used to massacre us, and this must be addressed and must be opposed.

3:

… Committees and the emergency rooms on the ground right now, who—to avoid their responsibilities, the Western powers have said that they are “political actors” and will not help them as such, even though we have seen that the UN ran out of Sudan in the first five days of the war. 97% of aid that has been given to Sudanese peoples through the emergency rooms and through the Resistance Committees, and denying, simply closing their eyes and thinking that these are “political actors” is a complete lie. As well as this, the UK must stop caving in to the UAE and not, as it has done, postponed deliberations against the UAE in the United Nations.

Coming back to the media, there is—on both sides of the belligerents, we see lies being propagated by the Kezan and by the RSF. We see channels like…

4:

… was one of the last people to meet with Hemedti just weeks before the war started. And right after the UK went to the UN to try to have the Sudanese complaint against the UAE be heard, RedBird IMI dropped their bid. And Nadhim Zahawi, I guess, had some sort of tantrum about him not being able to enjoy the fruits of the blood of our people. So, we see MPs, more than just Nadhim Zahawi—there’s David Cameron, for example, who led initiatives for the UAE to buy up property here in the UK, which includes this Telegraph bid that I just mentioned—there are many MPs compromised by Emirati interests. We must combat this.

/end transcripts]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Brandi Buchman at HuffPost:

A public watchdog group sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a slew of other Trump administration officials Tuesday after a journalist revealed he was inadvertently added to a text chain discussing U.S. war plans. The lawsuit, brought by the watchdog group American Oversight and first reported by HuffPost, requests that a federal judge formally declare that Hegseth and other officials on the chat violated their duty to uphold laws around the preservation of official communications. Those laws are outlined in the Federal Records Act and, according to lawyers for American Oversight, if agency heads refuse to recover or protect their communications, the national archivist should ask the attorney general to step in. On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported that national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added him to a Signal group chat with more than a dozen Trump administration officials and aides including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, homeland security adviser Stephen Miller and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. CIA Director John Ratcliffe told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he was also in the Signal chat. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would not admit whether she was a participant, though Goldberg reported she was; instead, she said the matter was “still under review.” As American Oversight lawyers pointed out in their lawsuit Tuesday, Rubio is also the acting archivist of the United States and, as such, “is aware of the violations” that allegedly occurred. He is also “responsible for initiating an investigation through the Attorney General for the recovery of records or other redress,” the lawsuit said. Goldberg’s article only shared a portion of the messages he received over two days. Most of the texts were “procedural” and “policy” talk, he wrote, but that changed on March 15.

Good to see that scumbag Pete Hegseth got sued for his role in the Signal chat leaks. DUI Hire Hegseth must go!

[mossadspypigeon]

as a fellow jew, being against the Israeli governments genocidal actions is not antisemitic. the singer in eurovision supports those actions, of course people are pissed the fuck off. in what world is it alright to massacre innocent people? you can claim hamas all you want, but the world knows the truth and the world is disgusted. bombing hospitals, shooting children, blocking aid, and starving people is not right no matter who you are. if you think otherwise you are a monster.

anon: in what world is it alright to massacre innocent people??? uwu

also anon: shits on the survivor of a massacre in the same paragraph while not acknowledging oct 7, a MASSACRE, at all.

you’re a joke. “as a jewwwww” lmao get away from me you boged trash. supporting people who want all jews annihilated isn’t a flex.

shooting children…😂😂 fam that’s hamas. hamas hides in hospitals and shoots rockets from them. hamas murdered babies with their own bare hands and kidnapped and branded children. hamas even uses aid to shoot rockets. hamas shoots their own children and anyone who tries to take aid. hamas controls the aid. hamas has murdered protestors.

gazans have been PROTESTING THIS. the head of a hospital there recently refused to let hamas use it as a base and received death threats from them. remove head from fucking sphincter dude and blame who is actually at fault, not your own people who were ATTACKED FIRST IN A MASSACRE.

https://archive.ph/UZYAA

and hey FELLOW JEW:

these are just some examples of why your points are ridiculous, including statements from a palestinian activist. maybe listen to palestinians not associated with hamas. if you care about them so much.

maybe also research what their nationalist movement states, what their leaders have said, what their polls say, what their education system teaches. but no, right? why research the other side when you can show you’re “one of the good jews,” by jumping to shit on your own people, including a survivor of the worst massacre of jews since THE SHOAH??

you want to talk about murdering children? maybe condemn the fuckers who murdered YOUR OWN PEOPLE. YOUR OWN BABIES. but nope i rarely see antizionist jews do this. so excuse me, but i consider every single one of you to be disgusting jokes.

[sayruq]

The Committee to Protect Journalists has been ignoring the genocide of Gaza, going as far as to end a different report on number of journalists killed in 2023 on Sept 2023 so they didn't have to add Palestinian journalists to the count.

Here they are now deceptively lumping Gaza with Israel and under counting the number of journalists murdered by Israel - 74 instead of 100+ (which was the official count at the end of Dec 2023)