Our Methodology

Who is a journalist?

We apply the traditional and non-discriminatory definition that a journalist is someone who gathers information and disseminates it to the public. For the purposes of this archive, this means verifying that people are active journalists or media workers. This includes: journalists working within journalistic organizations, independent journalists, journalism professors, and media workers involved in producing journalistic work such as social media professionals, camera operators, and translators.

In cases where we can't verify employment, we check whether any Palestinian journalism organizations claim them. Due to the circumstances of reporting under siege, and the increase in independent journalism to document genocide, we strive to adopt a human-first approach that includes details how each journalist worked and how they were murdered. We include interviews and obituaries from colleagues and family. As such, this database will likely be the most comprehensive, but it is almost certain that this is still an undercount.

The long-held principle that the right of a journalist to do their job without being murdered is absolute. It is not contingent upon our judgement of the quality of their work, their political views or past affiliations. As archivists primarily concerned with the unprecedented mass murder of journalists by the State of Israel, and dedicated to the protection of journalists under threat of murder in the region, we insist that anything less than that is tantamount to tacit acceptance of the targeting of journalists.

Taxonomy of Murder

We classify all journalists killed as murdered journalists, whether killed on the job or in their homes.

We base this reasoning on several factors. The pattern established and documented in this archive, where the frequency and number of journalists killed by Israel has exceeded any other documented military campaign ever recorded, indicates intent in the context of genocide. The Israeli military has also confirmed the deliberate targeting of journalists on multiple occasions with the IDF openly bragging about assassinating a journalist and their family in some cases. Furthermore, the method of killing is in and of itself an indicator of intent. Around half of the journalists that we memorialized (as of 3 April 2025) have been killed in their homes or tents of refuge along with their families. This follows the confirmed implementation the “Where’s Daddy” system, which has been reported to include a wide bank of targets beyond active combatants and programmed to assassinate a target as they enter their home, often carried out with a 1-or-2-ton bomb that kills both the target and their families.

Finally, we believe that in the context of genocide, a journalist who is murdered due to their occupation or due to maximalist targeting of civilians under siege is fundamentally a murdered journalist. This is an unprecedented situation. At no point in recorded history have journalists been murdered at this scale. As such, every journalist killed is ultimately a loss not only for the ability of Palestinians to record and disseminate their reality, but to journalism as a whole.

The maximalist targeting of civilians requires a maximalist definition of murdered journalists. Under these circumstances, limiting the definition of journalists murdered only to those whom Israel has confirmed targeting privileges the murderer and not the murdered. It also obfuscates the pattern via which these killings have been carried out, and as such hinders the ability to stop it.

Killed at Home

We define a killing to be "at home" if it is at the journalist's home, family home, or known place of refuge.

Family Members

We only count family members killed in the same attack that killed the journalist. Our number is an undercount, as we do not count family members that later passed from their wounds.