The Honest Take

CPJ Live — The CPJ Files panel — corrected transcript
English (US)

00:00:00.040 — 00:00:21.960 · Leslie Kajomovitz
But CPJ has dozens, I think about 60 of names or more, where they both claim that the journalists died in, quote unquote, a dangerous assignment, while the description says that they died in their home. So use a little bit of logic and tell me, how can a journalist be in a dangerous assignment, whether in their own home?

00:00:24.960 — 00:00:54.040 · Ben Chertoff
This is The Honest Take, the show that goes past the headlines to find out what's actually true about Israel and the people covering it. I'm Ben Chertoff, and this is a bonus episode, a full replay of a panel we streamed about what we found inside the Committee to Protect Journalists database of journalists killed in Gaza.

Our research says more than half of them were operatives or tied to terror groups. Erin Molan moderated, and she'll introduce the panel.

00:00:56.840 — 00:04:48.860 · Erin Molan
Hello. Hello. Welcome. Wherever you are. I know people are joining us from all over the world. I am here in Sydney, but luckily we are connected by the internet and many other things, so it's great to be able to all come together and talk about a really important issue. And by the way, we're going to introduce something that will be novel to some of the others out there.

Facts and evidence. Who would have thought? Shocking, huh? A lot of this, you will say, we have been saying this forever, but what HonestReporting does is it goes in there, it gets the facts and it puts it out there for the world to see. Now, I know a lot of the people who we would consider enemies of everything that we value won't share that, but that doesn't matter.

Facts matter. And here is where we discuss them. What we're talking about today. This is the CPJ Files. What our research uncovered. HonestReporting do this better than anyone. And the fact that you're here shows that you already know that. How many times have you seen a headline about a journalist killed, maybe in Gaza.

And then if you follow the right accounts on social media, you might see a day or so later a picture of that same journalist holding a machine gun. So not a journalist at all. And this would be, by the way, if it was just random account sharing, the kind of information that is being put out there by a couple of organizations, I'll highlight in a second.

Not great, but not completely damaging. The issue is when these farcical groups put out the wrong information, otherwise known as lies. It gets picked up by mainstream media organizations people consider to be reputable and spreads like wildfire. And the damage is done. As we've seen, the lies travel so quickly to millions and millions.

Rarely does a correction come, but if it does, a handful see it and that's it. The damage is done. This is why this work matters so, so much. Now, two of the main perpetrators in this space that have databases that put out the wrong information regarding the alleged targeting of journalists by Israel. So the Committee to Protect Journalists.

It's ironic that name, isn't it, the CPJ and the International Federation of Journalists, the IFJ. So both maintain these databases of slain inverted commas. Journalists. But who are they really. And again, how damaging is the lie? And not just for Israel. And that matters greatly, by the way. But to all of us who value a free press, the sanctity of life, peace, prosperity, democracy, all of that, it damages everything.

Our panel today is superb, and I'll bring them in in just a moment. So the CPJ acknowledged on June 25th that it was conducting a full review of its database of journalists, again inverted commas killed in the October 7th war, citing obituaries published by terrorist groups declaring CPJ listed journalists as operatives.

Don't you hate that when you get let down by the terrorists you're trying to provide cover for? That is just disappointing. I'm being sarcastic, by the way. CPJ has removed eight individuals from its database for participating in the hostilities. That's a kind way of putting it. And seven for not meeting its definition of a journalist.

00:04:50.020 — 00:05:38.799 · Erin Molan
They're now apparently self auditing. But I mean, trust that, if you will. And if you want to. According to HonestReporting research, over half of the journalists in CPJ database are operatives or have affiliation with terrorist organizations. Half. Over half. That's not just like, hey, we got you.

We found this one minute example. This is huge. It debunks the myth entirely. Now, HonestReporting has also found that IFJ silently removed eight terrorist tied individuals from its database, and it has provided no explanation as to why. Nothing. It thought it could just go under the radar, but not on HonestReporting.

Watch

00:05:39.840 — 00:06:24.870 · Erin Molan
Now News outlets have repeatedly published stories about these journalists slain in the war. Over 100 were, they quote these figures. And the headlines, of course, are horrific. This is what they do, and this is why I'm covering it and exposing it matters so much. Let me introduce three people who are phenomenal in this space.

Leslie Kajomovitz, its media professional 20 years in international news. So Leslie brings a global perspective shaped by being born in the US, raised in Latin America, currently living in both Israel and Europe. Her background has provided her with a deep understanding of how media shapes narratives across diverse cultural and geopolitical landscapes.

Leslie, welcome to you. Great to have you here.

00:06:24.990 — 00:06:26.390 · Leslie Kajomovitz
Hi, Erin. Thank you.

00:06:26.830 — 00:07:06.490 · Erin Molan
Thanks for having me. Gabriel Epstein, it's such a pleasure. Now he's in Israel Policy Forum, senior policy associate based in Maryland. He's previously worked as a research assistant in the project on Arab-Israeli relations at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and his analysis has appeared in the Washington Post and the Associated Press.

are originally from Washington State. Gabriel holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Washington, and an M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Now you're just showing off, Gabriel. That's really actually quite disappointing, but welcome to you.

Great to see how qualified you are.

00:07:06.730 — 00:07:08.450 · Gabriel Epstein
Great great, great. That's how you know I'm young.

00:07:09.810 — 00:07:26.490 · Erin Molan
That's terrifying. Author and researcher Salo Aizenberg is on the board of HonestReporting. He's a senior fellow at UN Watch and reports for the Henry Jackson Society. His work has been cited by the Free Press, the Telegraph and other media. And, of course, he's most proud of being involved here, aren't you?

00:07:26.810 — 00:07:30.170 · Salo Aizenberg
Thank you, Erin, very much for having me. Yes, definitely.

00:07:31.090 — 00:07:45.210 · Erin Molan
Legends. Let's jump straight into this. I want to ask initially, and I'll start with you, Leslie. Ladies first. Were you surprised by what HonestReporting uncovered? That a lot of the journalists were not, in fact, journalists?

00:07:46.640 — 00:08:09.240 · Leslie Kajomovitz
I'll be honest, I wasn't surprised that a lot of the journalists weren't journalists. I was surprised when they came out with the evidence that they had invaded Israel. Because a big part of them invaded Israel, that the mainstream media didn't care, didn't fire them for the most part. There was a petition for the Washington Post in the New York Times for months going on.

That really surprised me.

00:08:10.760 — 00:08:12.240 · Erin Molan
What about you, Gabriel?

00:08:14.160 — 00:08:49.300 · Gabriel Epstein
Not not terribly surprised. A bit by the numbers. Frankly, part of the reason it's not surprising is that if you looked at the relatives on friends social media of some of these people around the time that they had died during Ramadan on anniversaries, things like this, or in non-official kind of group martyrs channels and things like this that commemorate people, you could find evidence in a lot of cases, sometimes coming out months later.

So when the official group stuff comes out, you know, just in the last couple of months, it's not quite as shocking, but there's a lot of cases where there was really no open source indication before. So in that sense, very surprising.

00:08:49.780 — 00:09:10.500 · Erin Molan
And by the way, the point I'm making about not being surprised isn't that, well, we didn't need this research because no one's surprised. This research is crucial because what it does is give us weight behind what we, as sane people on the right side of history, already knew. This is crucial because you can't just say, oh, it's not true.

You actually need evidence to back it up, right?

00:09:10.540 — 00:10:37.250 · Salo Aizenberg
So yeah, absolutely. I mean, what's interesting here is that you have me, Leslie Gabriel here. Um, you know, this is an HonestReporting event, but the information that's coming out is really all of us. Everyone here did work on that. That HonestReporting compiled. And what it really shows, which is disturbing, is that not a single mainstream media outlet in the entire world has uncovered this.

This is all us. It's all kind of nonprofessionals in some sense, that are uncovering this information and bringing it out there, and it's the collective work and HonestReporting and other groups that have forced it onto the global stage in a sense, and kind of forced CPJ to take notice. I mean, there's really no reason why The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, whatever, BBC, whatever in Australia, World Press, they could have done the same research.

It's all out there. I mean, there's no reason why they can't go to the Hamas martyr notices and match up the that their journalists are their fighters and report on it. So there's still not a single mainstream media news report about this topic. It's total silence. And it's just us and others on the internet that on X and other that we should give credit to collectively.

00:10:38.330 — 00:11:14.310 · Erin Molan
Absolutely. It is utterly disgraceful. But. But I tell you what, and Leslie, I am sure you all relate to this. As a 20 year media veteran, there's almost nothing that media outlets hate more than having to report on something that proves that they've been wrong multiple times. If mainstream media were to report on this and these findings, which if it were in any other field they'd jumped to because it's so big, they would also have to admit that they ran multiple headlines that were wrong, that they have printed lies to their audience.

They're not going to jump onto that, are they, Leslie?

00:11:15.830 — 00:11:49.300 · Leslie Kajomovitz
They aren't, and they haven't for over a decade. I mean, if you go back to the CPJ database, it's not it didn't start on October 7th, as they like to say. You'll find names since 2015 that I don't know. The mayor Institute for terrorism had already found pictures of them being buried. You know, with Hamas draping.

They they're still there ten years later. So no, they're not going to, you know, correct themselves. They hate doing that. And CPJ doesn't even seem to be wanting to be legitimate for at least a decade.

00:11:50.660 — 00:11:59.100 · Erin Molan
Gabriel, what does this do in terms of damage? How dangerous are the lies that that millions see?

00:12:00.220 — 00:12:00.660 · Gabriel Epstein
Well, I.

00:12:00.660 — 00:12:01.380 · Gabriel Epstein
Would say.

00:12:01.940 — 00:14:31.070 · Gabriel Epstein
First, first, I would say only to slightly push back on the framing is that media organizations who are trying to report on Gaza without reporters on the ground, relying on stringers or on social media, basically on a very partial, jumbled up kaleidoscope of perspectives, have a really hard job. There's also the problem that a lot of times it's you don't find out within 5 or 6 hours whether or not someone was affiliated with the terrorist group or not.

Sometimes you only find out months or years later and you really need to dig for it. Now, that might be hard for your average reporter who has a couple of hours to file a deadline or file a story, you know, to meet a deadline or something like this, and they don't have time to come back to it. But for an organization like CPJ, I would argue there's a professional obligation or a professional interest in ensuring that when you're trying to protect journalists, that they that everything follows the regulations of your organization.

Right. CPJ didn't remove these people because they made a sudden decision that their policies had changed. They just went to enforce their policies. Right. And there's kind of a two fold problem here. One is for us outside people who are consuming the news. Right. And that's that if you don't know one, that sometimes the journalists who have been killed were not killed because they were journalists, they were killed because they were militant or because they were standing next to a militant or something like this.

As you know, collateral damage is terrible as it is. That's one problem. We don't we don't know that. And we also don't know that sometimes the stringers that are being relied on. Right. We're not exactly good faith actors. They were not neutral arbiters of the news to the extent that that's possible, obviously in a war zone.

Then the second problem is for media professionals and journalists within Gaza themselves. Right? Gaza is a very heterogeneous media environment. You have people who are very big on social media and have a bigger audience than a lot of the news sites. You have militant affiliated television channels, radio stations, etc. you have privately owned news agencies and organizations, and you have people who work as freelancers, as fixers, as stringers, etc. everyone who's not a militant and operates as a media worker, a journalist, a cameraman, a photographer, whatever is put in danger when they don't know that there are people who are going to be targets for the Israeli military because they are militants, they're put in danger when those people are in tents next to them, when they are moving around near them, when they come into contact with them, only knowing about the civilian side of their profession, not the militant side.

That's a real risk. And it's irresponsible. One, obviously, it's irresponsible for militants to put other media professionals in that situation, but that's not something that they would care about. But it's dangerous. And so in the interest of protecting journalists, as CPJ's name indicates, it's important to be honest about these kinds of things, to not let this system persist because it does put other journalists in danger.

It puts innocent people in danger.

00:14:31.750 — 00:15:41.680 · Erin Molan
Look, I agree entirely, but but to then push back on on part of your framing regarding responsibility of journalists and the reliance upon organizations like CPJ. I would say as a journalist that absolutely, you can't go in there yourself and see and you have to sometimes rely on organizations. But if I'm putting something out there and my name is to it, regardless of whether I'm at a local council newspaper or I'm at the New York Times, the responsibility to notice is on me to determine whether or not that organization is reputable, whether or not that information is right, and if I can't verify it either way, then I ain't putting it out there.

And I think that journalists need to take individual responsibility. And the newspapers, TV networks, whoever it is they work for as well, need to determine themselves by maybe a bit of journalism, whether or not they can rely on those figures. So I see your point about it's difficult for them to go in and to see it themselves.

But there's also an onus on you as a journalist to determine whether who you are quoting, whether it's Reuters or whoever else, CPJ, whoever, wherever it is, is, is an organization that values truth and that has done the work themselves and isn't putting out propaganda.

00:15:42.200 — 00:15:43.160 · Gabriel Epstein
That's very true.

00:15:44.440 — 00:16:07.560 · Erin Molan
Let's go to Salo. Um, Salo. I don't see uproar regarding terrorists infiltrating media or hijacking media. Why are all those who are so angry about Israel allegedly targeting journalists? Not angry when evidence comes out that terrorist organizations are using journalists and journalistic fronts to kill.

00:16:08.240 — 00:17:52.450 · Salo Aizenberg
You know, this this is, in my mind, the maybe the biggest story of the Gaza war that's emerged because it cuts through everything. It sort of debunks everything all the way from targeting civilians to the whole genocide hoax. Uh, this first, it's okay. You're you're targeting civilians, and you're targeting journalists, not only civilians, but journalists.

Uh, really highly protected civilians. Maybe. Maybe children are the only one who are more kind of sacred. But journalists are sacred. They're the ones reporting the news. And not only are you killing them, you're specifically targeting them to silence their crimes. Now let's come out. Wait. That's not true at all.

And it's not just 1 or 2. It's dozens. It's not just dozens. Hey, it's about 100. Uh, so it just kind of cuts through. It's the most important story because it debunks everything that's been said about what Israel has done. And if you admit that, then you have to admit, wait, maybe everything that we've heard about Gaza is totally wrong.

And it's not just that the journalists are terrorists. They're the ones that are reporting what's happening in Gaza. So when there's a mosque, that's it. And you see in the media, 12 children and civilians were killed. Who's that reporter? It's Hanan Islamiyah, it's Anas al-Sharif. It's all those other reporters that was being picked up the media, and they're lying.

And we've proven many times that they're lying. So every. Every piece of information that's come out of Gaza, that's fed into the civilian harm, that's fed into this whole genocide, libel is all stems from these journalists. And if they're proven to be the terrorists, you have to rethink everything you've read and written about this war for three years.

And as you said, most people just don't want to do that. It's not the narrative that they're comfortable telling.

00:17:54.050 — 00:18:05.570 · Erin Molan
Leslie, can you tell me who these journalists actually are because you found out some of the connections to to senior members and commanders of Hamas? It's not just randoms.

00:18:06.410 — 00:19:29.260 · Leslie Kajomovitz
Yeah. So, you know, well, like Gabriel has been looking into like the posters and finding like confirmations from Hamas and PIJ, I've been focusing more into like they're their family connections. Who are they really like. Not not only whether they were militants or not, but who they are. And you'll find, You know, the grandson of well, not on the CPJ list, but you'll find another list.

For example, the the grandson of Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas you found. You'll find the son of a, you know, senior Hamas members that were killed in the 2000 that founded Hamas, that were deported to Lebanon back in the day. Their children now are, quote unquote, journalists. Um, and these are very, very senior members you'll find in the CPJ list, you'll find actual senior members of Hamas, at least one of them.

It's a senior member from the Politburo. He helped the Hamas design the Al-Qassam Brigades website where we get all the information posters, for example. His children are part of the CPJ list as well. So now you have senior members of Hamas, legitimate journalists and their children. It's, you know, and as I as Salo was saying, these are not necessarily information that is hidden that you have to go.

You know, I don't know. Be Mossad to find out. All you got to do is go to their Facebook pages.

00:19:30.900 — 00:19:59.820 · Erin Molan
Gabe, what is Israel? How do they tackle this currently? And the Policy Institute? I know you'd be all over this. And what do you think they could be doing better. Because again, you look at what HonestReporting and you three have done here and what you have uncovered. And the point is made, this is available if you're willing to take the time to go in and actually just look and put it out there, can Israel be doing more to expose it?

And I know it's an uphill battle and you know they're up against it.

00:20:00.540 — 00:20:01.580 · Gabriel Epstein
It's a great question.

00:20:01.580 — 00:21:39.470 · Gabriel Epstein
It's a complex one, right. Because the IDF has this unprecedented level of access to information, right, both from closed source and open source intelligence, but also because they've extracted these massive personnel files and other documents from Gaza, and they've had units within COGAT, units within military intelligence, etc., processing them and extracting information.

Right. information exploitation or document exploitation. The challenge with that is, is that unless they're going to publish these things in their entirety, whether or not you trust that entirely comes down to whether or not you trust the Israeli military. And for most of the people who would be resistant to the idea that many of these journalists were also militants or militants, their primary job, they're not going to believe the Israeli military.

So in some sense, yes, the IDF needs to respond differently and it needed to respond better earlier in the war. It is doing so now, I would argue. Take the case of Ahmed Samir Shah, who was in Al Jazeera, a media worker who almost just a couple of hours after the strike that killed him, they released clear photos of him doing military training in Hamas uniform, etc. and we're pretty clear about the portfolio of evidence they had on him.

But in the past, that was not always the case. And when you look at the Committee to Protect Journalists, the CPJ listings, it's very common to see that they reached out, let's say, to the IDF's North American media desk for comment. And then they say they didn't receive anything back. And that may just be a blanket policy and maybe a policy, because the Israeli military generally regards CPJ as a hostile organization.

But no matter what, you want a toehold in the narrative right now, the thing that I'll say that's different about what Leslie and Salo and I and other people, including a fantastic analyst named Middle East Book on Twitter who I think everyone should follow, who's done probably some of the most comprehensive work on this.

00:21:39.510 — 00:21:39.670 · Salo Aizenberg
For.

00:21:39.670 — 00:22:09.350 · Gabriel Epstein
Sure. Our goal is to source basically nothing from the IDF, nothing from Israel. Everything has to be from friends. It has to be from relatives of the deceased, and it has to be from the militant groups themselves. One because then, well, primarily just because then you're not asking anyone to trust the Israeli military.

You're only asking them to believe what Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children of these people are saying themselves. And to me, that's a much smaller lift and much more convincing than asking someone to trust a military that maybe they don't trust.

00:22:09.350 — 00:22:19.010 · Erin Molan
Yeah, it's such a great point. And so that's crucial, isn't it? I mean, if you get it from them themselves, It's hard to argue with.

00:22:19.050 — 00:24:05.400 · Salo Aizenberg
Right. And I think, you know, building on that point, I think it cuts across to how this war was reported, where just in general, remarkably and stunningly, when Hamas said something, it was believed, uh, and I could see I could show you specific numerous articles in the New York Times where it says the Ministry of Health, uh, says something.

And then the next paragraph says Israel says something that cannot be independently verified. With that same disclaimer not being attached to the Hamas Ministry of Health. Point. So and the same thing with the journalist, I mean. Right. Israel could have done a lot more to provide information. I'll give you the example of Anas Jamal al-Sharif, a very well-known journalist.

He was killed, I think, in August 2425. I have it here. When was it killed? Uh, but Israel did put out documentation showing his listing and phone number on the East Shibuya battalion that he was injured in 2023. That document, they showed a list of operatives. They released documents for that. But the basic posture was we just don't believe you.

Uh, we're going to believe Hamas instead. Um, and that's sort of the posture of how the whole war has been reported. And I think what this has done that there are, you know, 56,100. It depends how what evidentiary basis you accept. Uh, but Hamas and PIJ have admitted to many dozens. So it's not just a couple of mistakes.

It's systematic. It should change the perspective that it's time to believe maybe what Israel said and maybe to disbelieve Hamas, which and that's another shift that the media is not ready to take. They don't want to do that.

00:24:09.360 — 00:25:08.020 · Erin Molan
How can we convince the mainstream media to disbelieve Hamas? What? Like. I'm sorry, but, ah, I'd love to get all of your thoughts on this. And, Leslie, I'll start with you. I, I've, I mean been heavily involved in in covering I mean, this latest conflict since October 7th and it doesn't matter what evidence is provided.

So. So Israel could be perfect, the IDF could be perfect. You know, people can put out there things that are irrefutable, and there is still such a huge portion of society that will not believe it, that refuse to believe it, that will continue to push out their lies. And in some instances, it's because, you know, they're pushing propaganda.

They know exactly what they're doing. Others are it's they just don't have capacity to look in. They see a headline, they believe it. They move on. Does it even like, how do we actually convince people if all the evidence in the world sometimes doesn't seem to convince them of the truth? Leslie.

00:25:09.220 — 00:26:00.770 · Leslie Kajomovitz
I think the biggest challenge is the repetition, you know. As you know, right now you're dealing with syndication news. You know what AP what Reuters. You know what AFP publishes all of the all of a sudden overnight. It's in tens of thousands of media outlets. Copy paste, no verification, no framing, no context.

And then you see it repeated everywhere. So when you're saying, well, here's the evidence, you know, let's say, I don't know, IDF show the evidence, here's the video, whatever. It doesn't matter the source. They'll come back and always say, well, I saw it in the BBC and I saw it on CNN and I saw it here. And how could 20 media outlets be wrong?

And, you know, once you understand how media, you know, how news is produced, you understand, well, it's very easy that they're all wrong because they're all copying each other. They're monitoring each other and copying each other. You know, whatever they're saying.

00:26:01.530 — 00:26:30.110 · Erin Molan
You're exactly right. And it's a similar thing with the United Nations. The amount of times that people have said to me, but, Erin, the United Nations is saying so, and you just think, oh my lord. I mean, we all know what a farcical organization it is, but if in your mind, it's an organization that cares about humanity, humanity and does good.

Same as media organizations. You think, oh, but you know, especially like a Reuters or an AAP. You think, well, oh, they just put out the information. And how do we deal with that, Gabe?

00:26:31.150 — 00:29:09.230 · Gabriel Epstein
I think, you know, there's in some sense something that can happen at the individual level. There's things that can happen at the institutional level. There's one core problem is that for a large part of the chunk of the people that, you know, you might be talking to or arguing with or trying to convince or seeing, pushing a certain narrative that was set long before October 7th, it's a much more baseline sentiment.

So, yeah, and people's sentiments are generally resistant to data or facts, unless it happens to reinforce that sentiment. I would say the other thing is that there's an illusion of authority, and then there's an illusion of information, and then there's an illusion of precision. Right. So the illusion of authority is that because a body says something, you don't need to examine their argument, and I think everybody across the spectrum can be fairly guilty of this.

When a professor says something, we inherently trust it. When a the United Nations says something, we inherently trust it. And then I think people do it in the other direction, too. Right. When the IDF says something, they inherently trust it instead of listening carefully. Right. And so sometimes it'll be Israelis who listen very carefully to what the IDF says or doesn't say, and then are willing to point out when there's a problem or not.

So sometimes it takes familiarity. The illusion of information is that Gaza is quite possibly the most heavily documented war in the world. It's a combination of a small territory, a relatively small population of just over 2 million people, a huge amount of international presence, whether that's NGOs, whether that's media attention, etc..

And then everybody with smartphones, smartphones, quite consistent internet access, despite a lot of outages relative to other big conflict zones like let's say, Sudan or Ethiopia. All of these things contribute to a constant firehose of information, and the illusion of that, that we get from that tidal wave of information is that we really know what's going on.

And the truth is you don't. What you're seeing is something refracted through a hall of mirrors. And sometimes it takes time, and sometimes it takes diligence, and sometimes it takes drilling down to get past that. And then the third thing is the illusion of precision. And that's that. When people see a statistic or a figure, they assume that that statistic is inherently true, right?

And that it accurately maps onto the world. And the problem is that's actually very rarely true. It's only really true when you have a data set that's completely self-contained and doesn't exit into the very, very messy real world. But what we have with Gaza is a lot of judgments and other things based on data that is just limited inherently.

Sometimes it is systemically skewed or biased in one direction or another. But when you combine these three things the illusion of precision, the illusion of information, and the illusion of authority, you can really rapidly construct an information structure that doesn't have a strong basis. Sometimes it doesn't have any basis in reality.

But as Leslie point out, is self-replicating. And if you if it's self-replicating long enough, it hardens into conventional wisdom. And that's kind of the problem that we're facing.

00:29:09.630 — 00:29:30.470 · Erin Molan
Yeah. That precision element you talk about is is really good. And the statistic part of it, Salo, isn't it. And we saw that example with, you know, the projected number of babies that were expected to die, that, you know, someone who was considered an expert from a reputable organization comes out and says a statistic.

People assume it's true.

00:29:31.150 — 00:30:54.450 · Salo Aizenberg
Yeah. I mean, look, the entire we're, we're we're diverging a little bit from the journalists, but. Right. The entire narrative of, of of casualties and fatalities that, that I and others have definitely worked on very closely in terms of combatants, kills and ratios. So we can can have a whole other seminar on that for sure.

Um, you know, the other point, um, you know, I want to raise is that this whole idea that that there's actually independent journalism in Gaza that there has ever been independent journalism in Gaza, that it hasn't been entirely controlled by Hamas before the war and during the war. That's also something that I find preposterous, that people aren't 100% aware of this, or believe that there could be some actual independent reporting.

And I've heard people even say, oh, let journalists into Gaza now international, not realizing that there are many local journalists reporting live daily to AP and AFP and NPR and other news outlets, is that this notion that some New York Times reporter could walk into a hospital and report what they see freely is just preposterous.

And that's all been the case the entire war. And that's kind of another it kind of cuts through this whole idea of this, you know, these journalists who are supposedly independent, reporting the truth. Um, and that's also just a blind spot.

00:30:55.130 — 00:31:10.040 · Erin Molan
Yeah. No, no, I get that. Absolutely. I think it's also relevant, though, and I think that there is space to also highlight where they've done this exact same thing in other spaces, I think because it backs up your argument regarding journalists. And that was my point with the projected number.

00:31:10.040 — 00:31:12.280 · Salo Aizenberg
And you know, I absolutely agree 100%.

00:31:12.480 — 00:31:27.280 · Erin Molan
But let's go into let's go into that how I mean, what is the situation for journalists in Gaza for those who may not understand? So I'll go go into that more if you can. This apparent independent journalist.

00:31:27.320 — 00:31:27.680 · Salo Aizenberg
Yeah.

00:31:27.720 — 00:31:33.640 · Erin Molan
It's not a free society where you can express what you think. Is it that doesn't exist there?

00:31:33.680 — 00:31:33.880 · Salo Aizenberg
Yeah.

00:31:33.920 — 00:32:36.140 · Salo Aizenberg
You know, I've listened to, uh, you know, Piers Morgan a few times in his, in his show, and he has one line that he's probably repeated about 20 times every interview. He says the same thing when when presented with information about something terrible that Hamas has done or something he says, well, let the independent journalists come in and they'll figure it out.

Uh, as if that sort of, you know, the the catch all I can. I can refute every point. You're not allowing journalists in so we don't really know what's going on. But the fact is, if you do, you can just you can look at the AP, they have journalists in Gaza, there are local journalists. I actually put an article out about this.

There are dozens of local Gazan journalists who are reporting daily life to the AP. Even just last week, there's reporting an AP from a Gaza journalist, and they have internet access and live video. So this idea that some kind of international journalist is going to walk in there and uncover some hidden truth is also ridiculous.

So I don't know if I answered your question there, but I thought.

00:32:36.180 — 00:32:37.260 · Salo Aizenberg
Does anyone have you know?

00:32:37.580 — 00:32:50.820 · Erin Molan
Absolutely. Leslie. Gabe, do you have anything else to add about the media landscape, say, on the ground? And we're not just talking, of course, about Gaza. It's in other areas as well. But they're specifically. What is your insight into how it operates on the ground?

00:32:51.860 — 00:32:52.460 · Erin Molan
Gabe.

00:32:52.740 — 00:35:07.220 · Gabriel Epstein
Yeah, so one thing is that if you work for if you're stringer for an international outlet, you might have slightly more protection in the time that you're working for them. But you need to consider what happens after. And very specifically, you need to consider your family, right? And not just your sisters, parents, etc. being to consider the extended family network, right?

It's not it's not unheard of for people's cousins to be targeted or things like this, including when you go outside the Gaza Strip, the chance that your family back home might be targeted. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib has talked about this. There's a there was an independent journalist who is an independent journalist by name of Omar Abd Rabu, who was beaten and imprisoned by Hamas and beaten very, very severely back in 2025 or 2024, I believe, and no longer is practicing journalism.

He still writes occasionally, mostly trying to get out of Gaza, um, trying to be independent and to write anything that doesn't fit. The general kind of approved narrative is very difficult. It's difficult to social level. Right, because people in Gaza are living in a very dire, very dire, very desperate situation.

So writing things that feel like it might be minimizing that or cutting against it or something like this can be really controversial, but the real challenge is what happens when you upset the authorities, right? And the secret police come for you and attack you. And there's many such cases of this, whether or not it's disguised as calling you, you know, an Israeli spy or something like this, or saying that you're secretly, you know, part of some other group and then using that as context to attack you.

So this is this is the challenge that people face. It's by no means a free society. It has a lot of media organizations. It has a lot of people who are either journalists or self-styled themselves as journalists. But it's the furthest thing, I think we could say from a free media ecosystem. And to back up all this point about what happens to international crews, they do this.

There's been very occasional things, right. I believe it was either an Indian or, I think both Indian and Norwegian camera crews at different points back in 2014, caught specific things of a rocket being fired from an alley next to the building they were in, or things like this, and very quickly were either forced to delete the video or quickly escorted out of the strip.

There's also, I believe, a previous head of OCHA who made a comment about Israeli precision munitions, and then was basically forced to resign his position because he came under physical threat from Hamas. So definitely not a free information environment. And that of course, it warps everything that happens.

And if you don't know that, you don't know that you're looking into the Hall of Mirrors.

00:35:07.780 — 00:35:10.140 · Erin Molan
Leslie, anything else to add in that space?

00:35:10.260 — 00:36:39.920 · Leslie Kajomovitz
Yeah. I think there's two things that are important to add, you know, because I think it's important to separate between what Gabriel is saying of people who are aligned with the narrative simply because they have to. And then the Hamas operatives or Hamas media workers, or however you want to call them and their motivations, there is something that is important for Hamas, for PIJ.

You know, we always talk about resistance as part of like a violent resistance for them, journalism. You know, the label journalism and spreading propaganda is part of that resistance. A core part of the strategy for them, and they acknowledge that is to delegitimize Israel. To make sure that Israel is delegitimized in the global stage.

Now, where are those people are being organized? It's also very important because we talk about the United Nations, how we're funding UNRWA, how we're funding the UN for these and for that. Well, we're also happening to be funding these propaganda from our Western taxes. They're all trained, organized, coordinated from an NGO that is highly funded by the UN, by the EU, Norway, Canada, Germany, in specifically the ones that invaded Israel.

They all came from that place. And then if you go back to the list of all the different journalists, I can tell you at least about 15% of the names came from that place, specifically the ones that go into Western media.

00:36:42.040 — 00:36:44.399 · Erin Molan
So can you tell me about see

00:36:45.720 — 00:36:54.390 · Erin Molan
who they actually are? What are they trying to do? What is their objective? And it clearly ain't telling the truth or putting out legitimate information to protect journalists.

00:36:54.430 — 00:36:54.590 · Salo Aizenberg
Yeah.

00:36:54.630 — 00:38:14.890 · Salo Aizenberg
You know, to be honest, I'm not I'm not an expert on the CPJ and their history and and and their makeup. I mean, I have looked at the board of directors. I know there was one, uh, one I, I forgot her name that that was not happy and resigned from the board after they announced this, this restructuring. But the board also includes, you know, legitimate senior senior executives of corporations and media media companies.

Um, so I think they I think there was somewhat at least had some sense to say, you know, we got to put a stop to it. We just can't have terrorists that Hamas admits. I mean, you're not even arguing with Israel anymore. You're arguing with Hamas if you don't admit agree that someone's a terrorist. And I think someone had some sense of saying, look, I don't want my name on this anymore.

I don't want to be a board member of an organization that is literally having Hamas platoon commanders and rocket battalions listed on this list if at some point. So it's good to see that there was some something happen now. They said they were going to finish this up in July. Here we are in August. They haven't put out a review, so we'll see what happens.

I'm not expecting fireworks. I'm not expecting a 180 degree shift. I'm expecting some minor shifts with a lot of caveats. I wouldn't expect anything great, frankly.

00:38:15.330 — 00:38:54.240 · Erin Molan
Yeah. And, Gabe, you spoke about the need for these organizations to clean up their own backyard. And by the way, that was Nika Soon-Shiong, who had left the board members. Thank you for for bringing her up. We should give credit when people. Well, I mean, regardless of what she was a part of earlier, actually do something.

But, Gabe, how do these organizations, I mean, if they're not those that you can just right away, you know, generally because we know that they're not trying to be legitimate or there's no legitimacy to them. They're propaganda and they're running cover for terrorists. But for those organizations that are getting it wrong.

But there's some hope. How do you shift?

00:38:55.080 — 00:41:41.670 · Gabriel Epstein
So I'll and Leslie and Salo, feel. So please feel free to step in as well with comments. I think one of the biggest things that they could have and should have done was more due diligence. It's from from what's written in these entries. What it looks like is that they received a report that a journalist was killed, did minimal, minimal verification that someone with that name was in fact killed, that the incident occurred.

Then they reached out to the IDF for comment, which is a good step one. And then that was it. No trawling through social media, no kind of more investigative work. Now there's a political sensitivity there, right? These are journalists. By and large, CPJ is an organization made up of journalists, a board of journalists, or people who care about journalists to look like you are trying to basically, like, investigate away someone's death and to not put it on the list or something like this.

You can see why there's a natural sensitivity to that. There's also obviously the possibility or the reality of political bias that definitely exists as well. Um, but it's a very, very sensitive subject. So I think there's probably a tendency when that runs into like, well, as they outlined, a very, very coordinated and fundamental, uh, to Hamas strategy of asymmetric information warfare, you tend to get this outcome, which is just that these organizations that are used to dealing with cartels, killing journalists or something like this, they get run over by this very sophisticated operation that is very hard to push back on in kind of a a sensitive and intelligent way, especially when we're dealing with the time lag that we talked about.

Now, one larger change that I think CPJ did discuss, and I don't remember how they landed on this was I think I think Leslie's point this that was maybe the first point out, you don't find the guys who did media for ISIS on the CPJ list, right? But you do find people who are from organizations like Al-Quds Al-Youm, Sawt Al-Quds, which is like the Islamic Jihad radio station.

And, you know, CPJ to their credit, does say, by the way, these these guys are a PIJ-affiliated media outlet. But let's take the case of Al-Quds Al-Youm, it was run by a guy named Wale Abu Nuna, who was part of the highest ranking military counsel in Islamic Jihad. Right. And then when you look at the so I found who are listed in the CPJ or were listed by CPJ, who were Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

There's at least 18 where the group itself has claimed them. An official poster. Everything of those 14, at least 14 worked at outlets that were already known to be PIJ-affiliated. Right. So once you start to see that a news outlet is run by a very high-ranking PIJ person, that guys from PIJ central, military media units from their central information unit, from the coordination or mobilization files that all throughout the network.

You're starting to see this. I think it'd be worth an organization like CPJ saying, should we have a more restrictive or a deeper search before we add them to the list? And then the last thing is just basic due diligence is rechecking over time. Keep analyzing these things.

00:41:41.710 — 00:41:42.590 · Gabriel Epstein
Yeah, because if they.

00:41:42.590 — 00:41:44.070 · Gabriel Epstein
Had, they would have found a lot.

00:41:45.430 — 00:42:46.140 · Salo Aizenberg
Yeah. To add to that, even before Hamas and PIJ were releasing the notices, I had seen that I think it was about 15 or 16 of the so-called journalists were from Al-Aqsa TV. And Al-Aqsa TV is literally a designated terrorist, US designated terrorist organization. And if you read the the the page on why they're terrorist organization, it's because they recruit children to become suicide bombers.

That was one of the reasons. So here you have an American company, an American organization. Keep listing people who are a terrorist group according to the United States. So that alone should have disqualified them, but somehow it didn't. Um, and there's some of them are still on there, and it just it just boggles the mind how that could be allowed, how board members of, of major U.S. corporations would want to be on a board of an organization that's listing US designated terrorists, uh, on their list as as legitimate journalists.

00:42:46.740 — 00:42:51.420 · Erin Molan
Yeah. The insanity prevails. Leslie, close us off. Close us off.

00:42:51.700 — 00:43:55.520 · Leslie Kajomovitz
Yeah. I think there's another aspect to it. Which is the collateral damage. Um, you have a lot of female journalists, for example, that get, you know, those are the ones that go, uh, you know, even wider into the media because they're female. You know, it's easy to sell that story, but CPJ has dozens, I think, about 60 of names or more, where they both claim that the journalist died in, quote unquote, a dangerous assignment, while the description says that they died in their home.

So use a little bit of logic and tell me, how can a journalist be in a dangerous assignment, whether in their own home? You look at the casualties and you'll see, like, you know, they weren't the only ones killed. So most likely they were not the target. Especially if they're female. Like applying a little bit of logic before adding these people in the list.

If you're going to claim that these are people that were killed in duty because they're not just claiming we're naming any journalist, they're claiming they're naming journalists that were killed for doing their job. And I think that's also a very important point.

00:43:55.960 — 00:43:57.760 · Erin Molan
That that is a crucial point.

00:43:57.960 — 00:44:27.280 · Gabriel Epstein
It's very briefly that this standard that Leslie just mentioned was applied to Israeli journalists. There were three Israeli journalists or media workers who were killed at the Nova Festival on October 7th. If you go to the bottom of the CPJ's main page, where they discuss the revisions that have been made to the list, those three were removed because they were they reached out to their respective news organizations.

They said they were not on assignment at the time. Um, but that standard, as far as I understand it, has not really been applied to Gazan journalists. And fair is fair. So it should be well.

00:44:27.320 — 00:45:31.630 · Erin Molan
And I shake my head not because that standard shouldn't have been applied to the Israelis. It should have, absolutely. But it's got to be applied equally and fairly to all. And that's the issue. And we said in every single space when it comes to this conflict and beyond. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so, so much for joining us here.

I really appreciate your company. Brilliant panel. Thank you all so much. The three of you to Leslie, Gabriel and Salo, thank you for for all the work that you do. I mean, this is one hour of your time, but you put in countless hours daily to uncover the truth and often not for much rewards. So we thank you so much.

We thank HonestReporting for the incredible work that they do. And thank you all, all of you who are tuning in. You are also playing your part in trying to push back on the BS narrative that we see everywhere. Thank you for for educating yourself. And I hate using that term because a lot of people use it and it's weaponized, but we really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. And make sure you follow everyone who's on here. You can look up their social media accounts, their websites, get involved in what they do, support what they do, and HonestReporting, of course support what they do as well. Thank you all so, so much. Thank you.

00:45:34.650 — 00:46:24.890 · Ben Chertoff
That was the CPJ Files, recorded live. If you take one thing out of it. Make it. Gabriel's point about the illusion of authority that when a body with a respectable name says something, most people stop examining the argument. That's the whole mechanism. It works because we let it. Thanks to Erin Molan for moderating and to Leslie Kajomovitz, Gabriel Epstein and Salo Aizenberg for the work behind this, most of it unpaid and unglamorous.

If this was helpful to you. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple or Spotify and leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. It genuinely helps people find the show and follow us @HonestReporting on TikTok, X, Instagram and Facebook. I'm Ben Chertoff. This has been The Honest Take. And we'll see you next time.