The Committee to Protect Journalists’s Board of Directors has voted to affirm the organisation’s existing definition of who is a journalist and rejected claims it planned to change its definition to exclude particular groups.
This came days after CPJ announced on June 25 that it was conducting a full review of its database of journalists killed in Gaza after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published obituaries identifying as combatants individuals previously listed by CPJ as journalists.
CPJ also shared a thread on X walking through names that were removed from its database, explaining the decisions.
Eight individuals were removed from the CPJ database after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published obituaries identifying them as members of their armed groups. Subsequent research by CPJ staff, which involves speaking directly to at least two independent sources,…
— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom) June 30, 2026
“CPJ frequently considers its definition of a journalist, including a review that took place in 2025 led by CPJ staff and the board’s Policy Task Force,” CPJ board Chair Jacob Weisberg said in a statement. “Board members asked for a vote on a plan to look again at this definition and today voted to affirm the existing definition.”
CPJ defines journalists as people who regularly cover news or comment on public affairs through any medium to report or share fact-based information with an audience.
CPJ’s longstanding policy has been to include journalists working for state-backed media and those working with media organisations affiliated with militant groups provided they are not engaging in combat or inciting violence in a manner likely to have imminent effect. CPJ has never included, and removes from its lists, anyone found to be engaging in combat or inciting imminent violence, it said.
“It is not true that CPJ planned to change our definition of who is a journalist to exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese press killed in the Israel-Gaza war. Such unsubstantiated allegations undermine the rigorous documentation of our Middle East and North Africa program over many years, while endangering Palestinian and Lebanese journalists documenting events on the ground today,” Weisberg said.
“The board stands fully with the staff of CPJ, whose difficult daily work of documenting attacks on journalists is today more important than ever, and with all journalists wrongly smeared and maligned for doing their jobs.”
Internal dispute?
Within days of the June 25 announcement, an internal dispute became public.
Nika Soon-Shiong, publisher of Drop Site News and a CPJ board member since 2021, circulated a letter to the board raising concerns about the scope and purpose of the review – and was subsequently removed.
In her letter, Soon-Shiong said the proposal to potentially exclude journalists who exhibit certain “behaviours and activities” or who work for “state-backed propaganda outlets, militant- and designated terror-affiliated organisations” had emerged from a Washington Free Beacon article by reporter Adam Kredo. The piece had placed her on its cover and accused her of terrorism by virtue of her role as publisher of what it described as an “extremist” outlet.
“Reopening the question of ‘who is a journalist’ carries profound implications for the individuals CPJ protects and for the organisations with which they are affiliated,” she wrote. “It’s a betrayal to our colleagues in Gaza who have faced the deadliest conflict for journalists ever recorded.”
Soon-Shiong said she had no objection to CPJ's existing practice of removing individuals confirmed as combatants. Her concern was with what she described as a separate “special task force” set up to redefine who qualifies for protection, and the risk that the exercise would apply different standards based on a journalist’s politics or employer.
She raised two specific lines of questioning.
First, whether the proposal meant revisiting CPJ’s existing definition of a journalist as a civilian under international law so long as they don’t directly participate in combat, or introducing a new and undefined category of disqualifying “behaviours and activities”.
Second, whether outlets would be excluded by institutional affiliation, asking why Hamas and PIJ were the only organisations named in the press release while outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, The Atlantic, the LA Times and the BBC – some of whose staff she alleges have served in or have family in the Israel Defense Forces – went unmentioned.
Citing the absence of a clear objective, defined scope, or assessment of institutional risk, she asked the board to formally vote on whether to proceed before any further work was carried out.
After sharing the letter with the board, Soon-Shiong said on X that she had been informed she was no longer a board member. The CPJ has not publicly commented on her removal.
I have been informed that I'm no longer a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists board. Below is the email I sent the board last night. pic.twitter.com/jWCIMCOpf7
— Dr. Nika Soon-Shiong (@nikasoonshiong) June 29, 2026
The wider debate
The review drew sharp responses from journalists and commentators covering the conflict.
Mohammed El-Kurd, Palestine correspondent for The Nation and editor-at-large for Mondoweiss, had said the CPJ’s board would “formally change its definition of who qualifies as a journalist, to broadly exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese journalists who worked for government-funded media outlets,” while Israeli, American, and Ukrainian journalists working for state-funded outlets or embedded with militaries would remain recognised.
El-Kurd also said a “special task force” had been assembled to explore excluding journalists working for “state-backed propaganda outlets and terror-affiliated organisations”.
One user, who works for Databases for Palestine – an organisation that maintains a database of Palestinian journalists killed and cases of incitement – published a lengthy thread on X pointing to a series of Israeli journalists with alleged concurrent or recent military roles, questioning whether CPJ's proposed criteria would apply to them equally. The thread named several Israeli television and print journalists working for outlets including Channel 12, Channel 14 and Ynet, alongside claims about their military affiliations.
Thread of Israeli "journalists" that CPJ will continue to recognize after this change they are making to protect Israel / their own racism.
— Zo Brown (@receipts_lol) June 28, 2026
1/ Lital Shimesh, Israel's Channel 14 https://t.co/Ma7QgjN93k pic.twitter.com/hXWiPwdyBK
The stakes
The CPJ’s database carries significant institutional weight. It is cited by international media, United Nations bodies, and diplomatic actors as an authoritative record of journalist deaths in conflict zones. In 2025, Israel was responsible for over two-thirds of the 129 media fatalities documented worldwide, the highest figure since CPJ began collecting records.
Adam Johnson, author of How to Sell a Genocide, told Al Jazeera that Palestinian journalists were being "exterminated” in Gaza “to make sure that Palestinians themselves are not allowed to report on their own genocide”. He added that even when Palestinian journalists do get platforms at major American outlets, the work is transformed before publication: “The New York Times and others will use Palestinian journalists as stringers or translators, but they will rarely give them their byline, if ever, and they will heavily edit them back in New York and in Jerusalem to make sure that they have the right line.”
By which he meant “the editorial line of The New York Times, rather than the actual line of reality”, one in which, he said, “Israeli denials are frontloaded, Israeli claims that the people who were killed were Hamas or whatever are frontloaded, the death count for Palestinians is given this ‘Hamas-run Health Ministry’ pejorative to effectively downplay the deaths.”
Update: This report has been updated with CPJ's latest statement. The headline has been revised.
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