The publisher of Drop Site News is no longer on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), implying that she was removed after she questioned the organisation’s exclusion of certain Palestinian journalists from its Gaza death toll, Nika Soon-Shiong revealed on Monday.
“I have been informed that I’m no longer a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists board,” she wrote on X, attaching the original email of concern she shared with fellow board members.
When asked about whether Soon-Shiong’s removal from the board was related to the review being undertaken at the organisation, CPJ told Middle East Eye in an emailed statement that her “five year board term ended in June 2026”.
“I request that the Board vote on whether to proceed with this effort, given the absence of a clear objective, defined scope of work, or assessment of the potential institutional risks,” she wrote in the email, referencing what she believed was CPJ’s lack of a methodology for removing the names of certain killed Palestinian journalists from its Gaza death toll.
“The proposal to exclude journalists who exhibit certain ‘behaviors and activities’ or who work for ‘state-backed propaganda outlets, militant- and designated terror-affiliated organizations’ emerged from our discussion of Adam Kredo’s Free Beacon article alleging I am too vocal against genocide and apartheid,” Soon-Shiong said.
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That article was published on 27 May by the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, which called the CPJ board “brimming with anti-Israel sentiment and virtually no dissenting voices”.
It called out Soon-Shiong by name – alongside the Filipino journalist and Nobel Prize laureate Maria Ressa – as a “virulent anti-Israel voice” who has compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Nazi Germany, and also called the war in the enclave a genocide committed by Israel.
The reporter, Adam Kredo, has a litany of hit pieces against pro-Muslim and pro-Palestinian voices to his name.
“Accusations of terrorism are widespread and politically motivated to discredit journalists and political opponents,” Soon-Shiong wrote in her email to the CPJ board.
“I appreciated the Board’s dismissal of the article… [but] because baseless accusations will become more common, not less, CPJ must strive to rise above the fray,” she said.
“Reopening the question of ‘who is a journalist’ carries profound implications for the individuals CPJ protects and for the organizations with which they are affiliated. It’s a betrayal to our colleagues in Gaza who have faced the deadliest conflict for journalists ever recorded.”
Palestine exception
Mohammed el-Kurd, the Palestine correspondent for The Nation magazine, said on X on Sunday that sources within CPJ have told him that the organisation plans to formally change its definition of who qualifies as a journalist, in a bid to exclude Palestinian and Lebanese journalists who worked for state-funded media outlets.
“Israeli, American, and Ukrainian journalists who work for state-funded outlets or are embedded with the military will remain recognized as journalists,” he wrote.
The mainstream media within the US and Canada have largely defaulted to CPJ when it comes to obtaining a reliable count of Palestinian and Lebanese journalists killed by Israel, especially as most choose not to source local organisations or the relevant health ministries.
Last week, however, CPJ announced it is “conducting a full review of its database of journalists killed during the Israel-Gaza War after militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad published obituaries identifying as combatants individuals previously listed by CPJ as journalists”.
As a result, twenty Palestinian journalists were removed from CPJs count, which now stands at 209 dead. The full review will be completed sometime next month.
The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate figure, for comparison, is well above 270.
In her email to CPJ, Soon-Shiong said she had “serious questions” about the dimensions of the review.
She asked why Hamas and Islamic Jihad were the only identified organisations, particularly as Israeli forces have been accused of committing war crimes, and several US journalists working at mainstream media outlets have employed reporters who were enlisted in the Israeli army.
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“What should happen to outlets like The Atlantic, LA Times, or BBC where editors served in the IDF directly? CPJ cannot credibly position itself as an objective judge of who is a legitimate journalist and what merits protection,” Soon-Shiong said in reference to the “Israeli Defence Forces”, or the Israeli army.
In its emailed statement to MEE on Monday, CPJ said it “has not changed its longstanding methodology, which applies to all conflict zones around the world”, nor has it “changed the way it classifies journalists”.
“Our long-standing policy is to include journalists working for state-backed media and those working with media organizations affiliated with militant groups provided they are not engaging in combat or inciting violence in a manner likely to have imminent effect. This is consistent with international humanitarian law,” the organisation said in response to questions from MEE.
“If we determine an individual was an active combatant or incited imminent violence then they would be removed from our list regardless of their outlet’s affiliation.”
Nika Soon-Shiong is the daughter of Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times. She joined the CPJ board in 2021 and took over the independent news outlet Drop Site last year.
Drop Site, founded by veteran journalists Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim, has produced some of the most underreported coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the workings of Palestinian politics, given its wide-ranging interviews with a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials.
