Key Takeaways:
- The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recently published its annual report on journalists who have been killed over the past year and found Israel guilty of killing 86 journalists and media workers, two-thirds of the total global number.
- A closer look at this report finds that almost 60% of those killed by Israel were affiliated with Houthi propaganda outlets, Palestinian terror groups, and Iranian state propaganda.
- The CPJ report makes it appear as if Israel is wantonly attacking independent journalism across the Middle East and the headlines covering the report carried the same message. In truth, many of those killed by Israel in 2025 were not credible journalists but terrorists and propagandists.
The headlines came quickly.
Israel responsible for two-thirds of record 129 press killings in 2025, says CPJ (The Guardian)
Record 129 journalists and media workers killed in 2025, mostly by Israel, says CPJ (Reuters)
Committee to Protect Journalists: Israel Killed More Journalists Than Any Other Country in 2025 (Ha’aretz)
With its annual report on journalist deaths, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has once again put Israel into the limelight, accusing the Jewish state of killing 86 journalists in 2025, accounting for two-thirds of journalist deaths globally.
For any cursory observer, this paints a picture of Israel as an aggressor, wantonly murdering journalists with impunity and attacking one of the core tenets of a free society: Independent journalism.
However, as HonestReporting has noted since the first weeks of the Israel-Hamas war, there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the CPJ’s statistics.
So, let’s break down the numbers.
Of the 86 journalists and media workers that Israel is accused of killing in 2025, 52 were in Gaza, 31 were in Yemen, and 3 were in Iran.
Based on our running list of Gazan journalists killed during the war, 18 (roughly 35%) were affiliated with a Palestinian terrorist organization, while 34 (65%) had no affiliation with any Palestinian terror group.
Of the 18 who were affiliated with a terror group, 11 had worked for a media outlet that was run or aligned with either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, while 7 have been accused of being terror combatants.
This includes Hossam Shabat (accused of being a Hamas sniper), Anas Al-Sharif (accused of being a Hamas terrorist in charge of a rocket unit), and Ahmed Abu Mutair (accused of being a Hamas terror combatant).
The CPJ is well aware of these accusations against some of these Palestinian journalists. It even profiled Shabat and Al-Sharif in its 2025 report. However, according to the CPJ, the evidence presented by the IDF against them was either not “credible” or “unsubstantiated.”
The IDF presented Hamas documents naming them as combatants within the terrorist organization. Short of taped confessions admitting to their duplicity, what level of proof does the CPJ need to take IDF statements seriously? Does the CPJ use an impossible standard of evidence in order to protect the reputations of everyone purporting to be a journalist, even when significant evidence proves otherwise?
It should also be noted that in the CPJ’s estimation, 18 of the 52 journalists killed in Gaza were designated as being targeted by Israel, while the vast majority (almost 65%) are determined to have been killed due to the conflict but were not specifically targeted. This belies the idea that Israel is purposefully killing journalists in order to silence them and instead points to the dangers of living in a combat zone where terrorists embed themselves and their infrastructure among the civilian population.
Yesterday, @pressfreedom released yet another report against Israel. I couldn’t find a single word about the largest, and easily provable, hijacking of the institute of press by a terror group. If you truly care about protecting journalists, isn’t that at least worth mentioning? https://t.co/RmJfzyXQXO
— LTC Nadav Shoshani (@LTC_Shoshani) February 26, 2026
Along with its inclusion of terror-affiliated journalists, CPJ’s report also included 31 journalists and media workers who were employed by the 26 September and Yemen newspapers, who were killed when Israel bombed their offices in the Houthi public relations department.
That’s right. The CPJ included 31 people who worked for an internationally-recognized terrorist organization’s propaganda arm. Are propagandists journalists?
The CPJ does the same thing in its counting of Iranian journalists killed by Israel during the June 2025 Israel-Iran war. Two of the three Iranians named by the CPJ worked for Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, an outfit that spreads regime propaganda both inside Iran and around the globe.
A Houthi media center. Where do the CPJ and its friends in real media outlets like @guardian draw the line when it comes to journalists working for terrorist orgs?
If the Allies had bombed Goebbels’ office during World War II, would the CPJ have considered it a crime? Probably. pic.twitter.com/Hz3bDvqex1
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 26, 2026
Thus, an in-depth look at the CPJ’s tally of journalists killed by Israel in 2025 shows that of the 86 who were reported killed, 21% were affiliated with Gaza-based terrorist organizations, 36% worked for the propaganda department of the Houthis, and 2% worked for Iranian propaganda. This means that almost 60% of those killed by Israel during 2025 were not independent journalists conducting fact-based reporting and investigations but terrorists and propagandists.
When the CPJ chooses to include such nefarious characters in its list of journalists and media workers killed over the past year, it is not only harming the integrity of actual journalists who serve in combat zones, but it is also using these deaths to create sensationalistic headlines and tarnish Israel’s reputation as it fights against dangerous regional adversaries from Gaza to Iran.
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