PRESS RELEASE: #Colombia informed the #ICJ that it had decided to withdraw the Declaration of intervention that it had filed under Article 63 of the Statute of the Court on 5 April 2024... (1/2)

INSANE! The Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom) has now removed ANOTHER 22 names from its Gaza journalist death database, bringing the total removals to 42, including 28 people it identified as having participated in combat. Researcher Leslie Kajomovitz (@kikas6652) previously identified alleged terrorist ties in 153 of 212 people on CPJ's list, including 64 she identified as combatants. @HonestReporting separately identified alleged terrorist ties in 120 of 209 cases. How many media organizations that parroted CPJ's figures will now issue corrections or investigate the accuracy of their previous reporting? And even if they do, what happens to the countless hours of television coverage, newspaper articles and social media posts that have already circulated these figures to billions of people? Those audiences aren't going to see a correction buried months or years later. There are also very serious questions about CPJ's criteria that aren't even dealt with here. Its external audit assessed whether the organization followed its existing rules, which permit journalists working for Hamas-affiliated media to remain in its database unless they are established to have engaged in combat or otherwise meet its exclusion criteria. Consider a Hamas journalist accompanying a Hamas terrorist who is actively planning or carrying out an attack against Israel. If Israel strikes the terrorist and both are killed, CPJ will still count the journalist as killed by Israel, even where the strike complied fully with international law. CPJ keeps declaring that Israel has killed more journalists than anywhere else in the world. Well, when Gaza has become a place where terrorists routinely pose as journalists, and organizations like CPJ help legitimize those claims by putting them on their casualty lists, of course you end up with an absurdly inflated “journalist” death toll. Massive credit to goes to Leslie Kajomovitz (@kikas6652) , @HonestReporting , @Aizenberg55, @EFischberger, @MiddleEastBuka, @JoeTruzman, @GabrielEpsteinX, and many others for their scrutiny and subsequent reporting of these records. The latest removals leave substantial questions about CPJ's verification process and how newsrooms have presented its findings. I hope this is just the beginning.