Watchdog says it was just 'raising questions' about journalists regarding Hamas attack on Israel

The head of a media watchdog group that suggested this week that freelance journalists working in the Middle East for American news organizations had advance knowledge of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel says the group was simply "asking questions."

Gil Hoffman, executive director of the pro-Israel group HonestReporting, told The Associated Press that the concerns raised by the group were "legitimate questions to be asked,” but “we don’t claim to be a news organization.”

"They acted as if we were stating facts instead of asking questions," Hoffman said.

The group this week in an entry on its website posted photos of several journalists who were in the area around the time of the Oct. 7 attack.

HonestReporting went further to suggest that the news organizations for which those journalists were working, including the AP, CNN and Reuters either had advanced knowledge of the attack or were somehow complicit in it.

That led to a cascade of denials and condemnations from each of the news outlets, all of which denied any prior knowledge of the attack and warned such a suggestion could put journalists covering the war in harms way.

“We raised questions and it led the media outlets to clarify the truth,” Hoffman said. “Great, that’s what we do.”