Were a majority of the Gazan journalists killed since October 7th, 2023 linked to terrorist organizations?

This question doesn't have a simple, settled answer — it's a genuinely contested factual claim with credible sources on multiple sides. Here's the landscape:

The claim's origin

The specific claim that "a majority" of journalists killed were linked to terrorist organizations traces to a December 2025 report by Israel's Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. The center examined the identities of 266 Palestinians who were labeled as journalists or media workers and died in the fighting, finding at least 157 of them were operatives or individuals affiliated with terror organizations. According to the center, at least 157 of them — roughly 60 percent — were members of terror groups or clearly affiliated with them, including 104 linked to Hamas and 45 to Islamic Jihad. A central theme of the report is "dual identity" — journalists who also held active roles in armed groups, with some reporters taking part in military activities or serving in propaganda arms Hamas views as integral to its information warfare strategy.

How this has rippled into mainstream press-freedom tracking

This pressure led the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the main international tracker of journalist deaths, to review its own database. CPJ said it recently removed eight individuals from its "killed" database after confirming they were Hamas or PIJ members, with another 12 names removed for unrelated reasons. Currently, CPJ claims 209 journalists or members of the media were killed by Israel amid its war in Gaza. A separate 2024 Jewish Insider analysis found that one-third of the Palestinian journalists listed by CPJ as being killed in the war in Gaza were employed by terrorist groups, with 33 out of 100 working for "Hamas-affiliated" media — a notably lower figure than the Meir Amit study's 60%.

A more recent and aggressive independent review went even further, claiming that a case-by-case review of the 191 names remaining on CPJ's list of journalists and media workers found that 172 (90%) have documented ties to terrorist organizations.

Why this is disputed

CPJ and press-freedom groups reject the "majority" framing on several grounds:

Bottom line

There is no consensus answer. An Israeli intelligence-linked think tank's study claims roughly 60% had terror-group ties, and this has prompted CPJ, the BBC, and other outlets to review and in some cases remove names from their casualty lists. However, CPJ and other press-freedom organizations maintain that most of those removed had the requisite "two independent sources" verification and dispute Israel's broader allegations as often unsubstantiated or based on contested evidence. Given the lack of independent on-the-ground verification (Israel has restricted international journalist access to Gaza), and the fact that the primary sources making the "majority" claim are Israeli government-aligned, while the primary pushback comes from press-freedom groups accused by critics of bias in the other direction, this remains an actively contested empirical and legal question rather than a settled fact.