More journalists were targeted and killed by Israel than any other country in the world last year, according to a report released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in recent weeks.
The report documents the targeted killing of 129 members of the news media during the 2025 calendar year, of which Israel was responsible 67 percent of all deaths involving reporter, photographers and other journalism positions, the organization found.
The CPJ has been documented media-related killings for nearly three decades. More journalists have been killed over the past three years compared to the number of reporters killed over the past 15 years, the group said.
Nearly 50 journalists were proven to be targeted by Israel because of their work in the news media, the CPJ said. Most of the journalists killed by Israel were Palestinians operating in conflict zones. The true number of reporters killed by Israel may never be conclusively known, because gathering evidence in conflict zones is difficult and, in some cases, evidence went missing or was deliberately destroyed.
Five journalists working for Qatar-based Al Jazeera were among the dead documented by the CPJ. The news organization said four of its journalists were killed by an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. The fifth journalist, correspondent Hossam Shabat, worked for a channel called Al Jazeera Mubasher, which is similar to C-SPAN in the United States.
The Israeli Defense Forces disputes the findings of the CPJ report, saying the accounts provided by the organization amounted to “deadly smears.”
“The IDF does not intentionally harm journalists or their family members,” a spokesperson for the IDF said in a statement. “The report is based on general allegations, data of unknown origin and predetermined conclusions, without considering the complexity of combat or the IDF’s efforts to mitigate harm to non-combatants.”
But the IDF has been known to deflect blame in the past, when it can be proven through video footage and other materials that its forces deliberately targeted journalists.
In October 2023, a journalist from Reuters was kiled and several other reporters and photographers — including one from Al Jazeera — were seriously injured after Israeli forces struck their caravan with a rocket. The group was documenting clashes between Israeli and Lebanese forces along the shared border of the two countries when the attack occurred. The journalists were wearing vests and helmets that identified them as members of the news media, and their vehicles had the word “PRESS” emblazoned on several sides.
The group Repoters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres/RSF) later released a video reconstruction of the incident that proved the journalists had taken precautions to ensure they were identified as members of the news media. Reuters released its own investigation that showed Israeli forces fired numerous mortars in rapid succession toward the group in a deliberate, targeted attack, based on information learned from nearly three dozen sources, including government and security officials.
An IDF official at the time said the group was “sorry” for the attack and was “looking into it.” After another Reuters journalist was killed in an Israeli airstrike, the news organization stopped sharing the location of its correspondents with the IDF.
