The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)—whose claims about detained Palestinian journalists being sexually assaulted by Israeli troops were a linchpin of a lurid New York Times report—has been caught quietly removing terrorists’ names from its widely cited list of journalists killed in Gaza. This latest blow to the CPJ’s credibility further undermines the Times piece, which at its most salacious featured two male “Gaza journalists” who claimed they were raped—one by a carrot and the other by a dog—while in Israeli custody.
HonestReporting, an Israeli media watchdog, reports that in the weeks leading up to the publication of the Times piece on May 11, CPJ surreptitiously removed six names from its running list of “Journalist casualties” in the Gaza War.
The Times piece, by Nicholas Kristof, cites a report by CPJ alleging that “three percent” of 59 Palestinian “journalists” who’d been detained by Israel since Oct. 7, 2023 “said they had been raped, and 29 percent said they had endured other forms of sexual violence.” It’s not known if CPJ connected Kristof with the two “Palestinian journalists”—one named and one anonymous—who told the carrot and dog stories.
Kristof calls CPJ “a respected American organization” but does not mention that it has faced persistent accusations of bias for repeatedly including known terrorists on its list of slain journalists. The group previously acknowledged removing at least ten names of Palestinians in recent months after it became clear those individuals were not actually reporters (and in several cases, were members of or affiliated with various Gaza terror groups).
But the six names, removed from CPJ’s list between March 29 and May 7, were quietly deleted without any contemporaneous acknowledgement of error from the organization, which claims to “use the tools of journalism to protect those engaged in acts of journalism.” Each of those six names once touted by CPJ as working reporters were actually “terror combatants,” according to HonestReporting’s review.
The findings raise new questions about the integrity and motivations of the primary sources in Kristof’s Times piece. More than a week after the controversy first erupted over Kristof’s sensational claims about “sexual violence” by Israeli troops against Palestinian detainees, his already tenuous credibility has crumbled further as the sources in the piece are picked apart.
The “Palestinian journalist” who spoke on the record to Kristof, Sami al-Sai, claiming he was raped by a carrot, “is a confirmed Hamas operative” who also alleges he was sexually assaulted by the Palestinian Authority, according to HonestReporting. “He is not a credible witness; at minimum his past work for Hamas and the incident with the PA should have been disclosed,” HonestReporting’s Salo Aizenberg wrote, in response to a long Q and A the Times posted on Thursday defending the Kristof piece.
The six names that CPJ deleted without mention include a member of “Hamas’ Jabalia Battalion,” “a terror combatant for Islamic Jihad,” “a commander in the Nasser Salah Al-Din Brigades,” and three other known jihadist militants. Though their names were belatedly added to a “clarifications and corrections” page on the CPJ’s website after Aizenberg flagged the issue, the journalism group still does not mention their terror ties, saying only that each individual was not in fact a “a civilian journalist or media worker.”
“By not issuing a clarification regarding its removal of these names from its list, it is clear that the CPJ is trying to hide its inclusion of so many terror combatants on its list of journalists killed in Gaza,” HonestReporting concluded in its analysis. “This removal of names from the running list of killed journalists seems to be much more widespread than the CPJ is letting on.
HonestReporting exposed yet another tranche of fake journalists on Friday. Maysara Ahmed Salah was described by multiple publications as a working journalist when he was killed by an Israeli strike in December 2024. But Hamas admitted Friday in a glowing tribute that Salah was actually a commander in the Al-Qassam Brigades.
The CPJ has been dogged by accusations of bias since the Gaza war erupted three years ago. The Washington Free Beacon reported as early as October 23, 2023 that the organization was including members of media outlets controlled by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on its running list of journalists killed in Gaza.
The practice continued throughout the war, drawing scrutiny and criticism. The Wall Street Journal noted in August 2025 that of “192 putative journalists on the CPJ list, 26 were employed by or freelanced for Al-Aqsa TV, which the committee generously describes as ‘Hamas-affiliated.’” Nineteen others worked for Al-Quds Al-Youm, an outlet the State Department says is “run by Islamic Jihad.” Seven were employed by Palestine Today, which even the CPJ says is “pro-Islamic Jihad,” while another nineteen were employed by Al-Quds Al-Youm, which the State Department says is “run by Islamic Jihad.”
While there is no governing authority in the news profession, watchdog and professional groups generally do not consider employees of totalitarian-controlled propaganda outlets to be journalists. This would disqualify many of the names on the list compiled by the CPJ.
The journalism group continues to claim on its website that “Israel has murdered more journalists in retaliation for their work than any other country between 2023 and 2025.”
“Israel’s disregard for the lives of journalists — and for the international laws designed to protect them — is unparalleled,” the CPJ wrote, adding that “Palestinian journalists have been slaughtered with impunity.”
A CPJ spokesman told the Free Beacon it “removes names if later evidence shows the individual was not a journalist or media worker, or if they were not active at the time of their death.” The spokesman noted that its global database “includes only those who have been killed in connection with their work or where there is still some doubt that their death was work-related.” Subsequent “clarifications and corrections” are then appended online.
The CPJ itself is hardly an objective group. Its board is controlled by New York establishment figures tied to publications that have been harshly critical of Israel. This past August, the organization’s vice chair, Lydia Polgreen, who like Kristof is an opinion writer at the Times, wrote that, “Eleven days ago, Israel assassinated a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a young man who had suddenly become the face and voice of the desperate people of his homeland, Gaza.” The Palestinian man in question, Anas al-Sharif, fought for the military wing of Hamas, according to Israeli authorities, who provided extensive documentary proof including salary records, training lists, a military ID number and injury records, and a photo of him with Yahya Sinwar. Nevertheless, Polgreen wrote that Israel presented “no credible evidence” of al-Sharif’s Hamas role.
On Thursday, the CPJ issued a warning to journalists traveling to the United States to cover the World Cup that they “may face questioning or hostility from immigration officials at the border or around venues.”
A spokesman for HonestReporting told the Free Beacon that when columnists like Kristof rely on the CPJ without performing additional reporting, they are doing a disservice to their readers.
“Every major outlet citing CPJ’s numbers has access to the same information HonestReporting does,” the group said. “This isn’t buried intelligence; it’s publicly available. When you print a statistic that Israel killed 209 journalists without asking who’s on that list, you’re amplifying Hamas propaganda. And at this point, the pattern is too consistent to call it an oversight.”
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