The CNN and AP freelance photographer who played kissy-face with Hamas has exposed major news organizations, and raised ethical questions.
The CNN and AP freelance photographer who played kissy-face with Hamas has exposed major news organizations, and raised ethical questions.
C NN and the Associated Press on Thursday cut ties with a freelance photographer who appeared in a photo being kissed by a Hamas leader who is believed to be the mastermind of the October 7 massacre.
The photo emerged as part of an exposé by HonestReporting, a watchdog group that raised a number of valid questions about whether freelance photojournalists for outlets that also included Reuters and the New York Times had advance knowledge of the attacks, or to some extent coordinated with Hamas.
The broader debate triggered by the story has renewed a number of issues that I faced earlier in my career, both as a journalist at Reuters on September 11, when we were barred from referring to the perpetrators of the attacks as “terrorists,” and as a student at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where we debated the obligations of journalists during wartime. My experiences may illuminate some of the attitudes toward covering conflicts that permeate newsrooms but may seem perplexing to those outside the world of journalism.
When it comes to the events of October 7, there are, I think, a number of distinctions that need to be drawn between those who were photographing the atrocities and those who may have crossed the line into participation. Israeli journalist Amit Segal has posted video he said was from the Facebook page of Hassan Eslaiah — the same photographer seen sharing a kiss with the Hamas leader — in which Eslaiah is on the back of a motorcycle carrying what appears to be a hand grenade. Sharing a kiss with Hamas and — assuming the video shows what it appears to — wielding a hand grenade cannot be justified under any journalistic conventions.
But, absent similar evidence, the mere fact that other photographers were on the scene relatively early in the morning on October 7 doesn’t necessarily prove that they were all equal participants. The distances from within Gaza to the border aren’t very far — we’re talking about as little as a few miles, depending on where the photographers slept. Photojournalists are accustomed to rushing to the scene when there’s news. While the more sinister assumptions are plausible, it isn’t inconceivable that photographers could have heard explosions and rushed to the scene and still been there relatively early in the attacks. There’s also a midway possibility — that they received some sort of vague tip to be near the border at the crack of dawn, rather than anything specific about a major terrorist infiltration into Israel.
Given that I don’t want to go beyond what we currently know, I want to delve a bit deeper into the broader philosophical debate about journalistic ethics during wartime.
To most people, the idea that journalists could just step back and watch horrible slaughter, without attempting to intervene in any way to stop it, is unconscionable. But there is actually a strain of belief among journalists that it’s important to stay out of moral judgments and merely document what is happening.
When I was at Columbia, we watched an episode of a show called Ethics in America, a public-television series in which a mix of people from various professions (law, politics, journalism, the military) gathered to debate ethical issues. In the episode we watched from 1987, Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree grilled professionals on a theoretical conflict between the fictional North Kosan and South Kosan in which a journalist, in this case then–ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, was embedded with the north side while Americans were fighting for the south.
As James Fallows later recounted, “With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one. What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks.” Jennings initially said he would warn the Americans, even if it meant missing out on the story and potentially risking his life. But this incensed Mike Wallace:
“I think some other reporters would have a different reaction,” he said, obviously referring to himself. “They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover.” “I am astonished, really,” at Jennings’s answer, Wallace said a moment later. He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: “You’re a reporter. Granted you’re an American” — at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. “I’m a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you’re an American, you would not have covered that story.” Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? “No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!” Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said. “I chickened out.” Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached. As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, everyone else in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror.
At the time we debated this in our ethics class, I took the position that I would — without hesitation or second thoughts — always intervene to save Americans, because I’d much rather be seen by my colleagues as a bad journalist than be a bad American or human being. But plenty of my classmates took the opposite view — a view of journalistic duties that no doubt could explain how some photojournalists would not have moral qualms about following around Hamas and photographing atrocities in a detached manner.
Of course, the story does not end there. It is hard to argue for journalistic detachment on the one hand, and consistently show bias in favor of Hamas and against Israel on the other. Obviously Eslaiah is an especially dramatic example, but it is certainly not the first or only time major news organizations have employed freelance journalists with significant bias. Just last month, the New York Times defended rehiring Gaza journalist Soliman Hijjy, who praised Adolf Hitler on social media, arguing, “We reviewed problematic social media posts by Mr. Hijjy when they first came to light in 2022 and took a variety of actions to ensure he understood our concerns and could adhere to our standards if he wished to do freelance work for us in the future.” This is the same paper, mind you, that had an internal civil war and pushed out several staffers over the decision to publish an op-ed by a U.S. senator that was seen as too anti-riot.
When I was at Reuters, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, a top editor issued what has subsequently become an infamous statement explaining why we were barred from using the word “terrorist,” arguing, “We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” My personal experience with this was, at the moment the second plane hit on September 11, I shouted the obvious point that it had to be terrorism, and I was scolded by the then-bureau chief, who hollered, “No f***ing opinions in this newsroom!” In the editor’s mind, the only facts we knew at the time were that two airplanes crashed into the towers.
There is a good reason why I ended up pursuing a career in conservative opinion journalism and work at National Review, where there are no problems with me rooting for America and calling terrorists terrorists. But the ultimate issue facing news organizations that seek to operate around the world is that they are regularly forced to choose between journalistic integrity and access — and they usually choose access.
Journalists who want to operate freely and have access in Gaza have to placate Hamas, or even get cozy with them. Wire services desperate for content in war zones are willing to overlook evidence of egregious conflicts of interest as long as they get the goods. During the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War, Reuters had to fire a Lebanese photographer after bloggers demonstrated that several of his photos had been doctored to make Israeli air strikes appear worse.
In the coming days and weeks, we should learn more about the photographers who were first on the scene to record Hamas’s terrorist attacks, and we’ll have more information to judge whether their actions could be defended on the basis of journalistic neutrality or whether they could more accurately be described as participants. But either way, for all their sanctimonious talk about sober-minded neutrality, this episode has already highlighted how major news organizations routinely rely on freelancers sympathetic to Hamas to gather news and spread it to the world.