Committee to Protect Journalists erases 22 people from list of media workers killed in Gaza war, after they are identified as combatants

NEW YORK — The Committee to Protect Journalists says it has removed 22 people from its list of media workers killed in the Gaza war after a review triggered by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad obituaries identified some as combatants, although it still named Israel the world’s leading killer of journalists.

With the reclassifications, the committee now concludes that Israel is responsible for the deaths of 191 journalists or other media workers in Israel or the Palestinian territories since the start of the war, sparked by Hamas’s bloody October 7, 2023, massacre on southern Israel.

“The accuracy and credibility of CPJ’s research are fundamental to our mission and to efforts to seek accountability and justice for journalists and media workers around the world,” the group’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement.

The CPJ says it has continuously revisited tallies as new evidence emerges since it began tracking the killings of media workers in 1992.

“We base the determinations we make solely on whether individuals meet our definitions of who we consider to be a journalist, not an individual’s affiliation or views, nor in response to pressure or intimidation from any government or interest group,” Ginsburg says.

Israeli forces “remain responsible for by far the majority of killings of journalists and media workers worldwide since 2023,” the CPJ says in a statement.

The group says it was taking 22 people off its list of slain media workers in the conflict, bringing to 36 the net total removed.

The committee also reinstates four people it says had been wrongly removed from the tally. It separately also reclassifies two Israelis killed in the Hamas massacre on October 7 as journalists.

Earlier this year, the watchdog said its board voted to reaffirm its existing definition of who is a journalist after facing public backlash over its decision to launch a “full review” of its Gaza casualty database.

The review was announced following a Times of Israel investigation that identified multiple Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives previously reported as slain journalists.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.