HonestReporting: Publications Of Hamas Attacks Photos Raise Questions

Photographers of major publications could have known about the terrorist attack.

The HonestReporting organization, which protects Israel from media bias, found photographs of the moment of the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israelis in the major media and called into question the ethics of their publication, Radio Liberty writes.

The photos, which capture the actions of the radical Palestinian group Hamas, recognized as a terrorist group in the USA and the EU, were published in the Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times and CNN.

In particular, photographers filmed burning Israeli tanks, members of Hamas in Israeli kibbutzim, kidnapped Israelis and the body of an Israeli soldier. HonestReporting is wondering if the photographers were aware of the impending attack or were at the border early in the morning by accident. The organization also notes that some of them, in all likelihood, violated the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Among the authors of the photos from Israel, which will later be published in the Associated Press and CNN, there is one who, on the day of the Hamas attack, published a selfie in front of an Israeli tank on the X social network with the caption in Arabic “Live from the settlements of the Gaza Strip”. In addition, HonestReporting published a selfie of the same journalist with the leader of Hamas kissing him on the cheek.

Acknowledging that recording what is happening in the war is part of the work of journalists and stringers, HonestReporting urges you to think about the ethics of the published pictures and the legality of the work of their authors. If the journalists or stringers from whom the media bought the photos “actively or passively cooperated with Hamas to obtain these pictures, they should be called to reconsider the boundaries between journalism and barbarism,” writes HonestReporting.