According to Palestinian figures, more than 11,000 people were killed in the Israeli counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip.
Jerusalem:
The executive director of Israeli media advocacy group HonestReporting said Friday that he accepted as “reasonable” the denials from four media organizations that they had no prior knowledge of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, adding that he was “so relieved.”
Portal, Associated Press, CNN and The New York Times strongly opposed this after HonestReporting published an article on Thursday questioning whether Palestinian photojournalists had tipped off the four media outlets that used their images.
Gil Hoffman of HonestReporting told Portal that his organization did not claim to know that the news groups had advance knowledge of the Hamas attack.
“I was so relieved when all four media organizations said they had no prior knowledge,” Hoffman said in a telephone interview for the article.
“We asked questions, we didn’t give answers,” he said. “I still firmly believe that the questions were legitimate and the answers from the media organizations themselves were appropriate.”
He added that there was nothing “problematic” with the two photojournalists from whom Portal acquired images.
Portal said it purchased photos from two Gaza-based freelance photographers who were at the border on the morning of October 7 and with whom the company had no previous relationship.
HonestReporting also distanced itself from the Israeli government’s allegations sparked by its article.
“There are those who took our story and acted like they knew the answers — the Israeli government, cabinet ministers, various Twitter personalities — we didn’t claim to know them,” Hoffman said.
In response to the HonestReporting article published on
‘SHOCKED’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office wrote on X: “These journalists were complicit in crimes against humanity; their actions violated professional ethics.”
Danny Danon, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and a former Israeli envoy to the United Nations, wrote on X after the publication of the HonestReporting article that the Palestinian photojournalists should be eliminated.
“We will hunt them down together with the terrorists,” he wrote.
Hoffman said he was “shocked” to read Danon’s comments. He also said: “There are clearly things in the statement from the Prime Minister’s Office that are not based on facts. We didn’t say anything specific.”
Danon and the Israeli government did not immediately respond to Portal’ requests for comment on Hoffman’s remarks.
“We are deeply concerned about HonestReporting’s irresponsibility in publishing such damaging allegations. “The chief executive has accepted that there is no evidence to support the inflammatory allegations in the report,” Portal said in a statement.
“The unfounded speculation in HonestReporting’s piece, portrayed as ‘raising ethical questions,’ has posed major risks for journalists in the region, including those working for Portal,” the news agency added.
AP, CNN and the New York Times referred to their previously published statements in which, among other things, they denied that they had any prior knowledge of the October 7 attack.
“IDEOLOGICAL PREJUDICES”
Hoffman, who was a veteran reporter for the Jerusalem Post newspaper before joining HonestReporting, defended his group’s decision to publish its article without first seeking comment from any of the news organizations mentioned.
He said that after the article was published, he asked his team why they had not sought comment before publishing.
“They said, ‘Well, we don’t claim to be a news organization,'” he said. “With media monitoring, (asking for a response) is generally more effective after the fact.”
HonestReporting describes itself on its website as “a nonprofit organization” with a mission to “combat ideological biases in journalism and the media as they impact Israel.”
Hoffman said he believes international media coverage of the ongoing war against Hamas no longer highlights the events of Oct. 7, when Hamas killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped another 244, according to an Israeli tally.
According to Palestinian figures, more than 11,000 people have been killed in the Israeli counter-offensive in the Gaza Strip since then.
“(Our) article for two days has brought the international public discourse back to October 7th. That in itself is a very important achievement,” he said.
Despite HonestReporting’s suggestions that the Palestinian photojournalists had secured their images in coordination with Hamas, he said he was “glad” their images had been published. “I really want the world to know what happened on October 7th,” he said.
After speaking to Portal, HonestReporting issued a statement saying: “We strongly condemn calls for violence or death threats directed at bona fide media professionals.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)