Whether reporting from the Middle East, the United States, or anywhere else across the globe, every CNN journalist covering Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the news organization’s bureau in Jerusalem prior to publication, under a long-standing CNN policy. While CNN says the policy is meant to ensure accuracy in reporting on a polarizing subject, it means that much of the network’s recent coverage of the war in Gaza — and its reverberations around the world — has been shaped by journalists who operate under the shadow of the country’s military censor.
Like all foreign news organizations operating in Israel, CNN’s Jerusalem bureau is subject to the rules of the Israel Defense Forces’s censor, which dictates subjects that are off-limits for news organizations to cover, and censors articles it deems unfit or unsafe to print. As The Intercept reported last month, the military censor recently restricted eight subjects, including security cabinet meetings, information about hostages, and reporting on weapons captured by fighters in Gaza. In order to obtain a press pass in Israel, foreign reporters must sign a document agreeing to abide by the dictates of the censor.
CNN’s practice of routing coverage through the Jerusalem bureau does not mean that the military censor directly reviews every story. Still, the policy stands in contrast to other major news outlets, which in the past have run sensitive stories through desks outside of Israel to avoid the pressure of the censor. On top of the official and unspoken rules for reporting from Israel, CNN recently issued directives to its staff on specific language to use and avoid when reporting on violence in the Gaza Strip. The network also hired a former soldier from the IDF’s Military Spokesperson Unit to serve as a reporter at the onset of the war.
“The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years,” a CNN spokesperson told The Intercept in an email. “It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible.”
The spokesperson added that the protocol “has no impact on our (minimal) interactions with the Israeli Military Censor — and we do not share copy with them (or any government body) in advance. We will seek comment from Israeli and other relevant officials before publishing stories, but this is just good journalistic practice.”
One member of CNN’s staff who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal said that the internal review policy has had a demonstrable impact on coverage of the Gaza war. “Every single Israel-Palestine-related line for reporting must seek approval from the [Jerusalem] bureau — or, when the bureau is not staffed, from a select few handpicked by the bureau and senior management — from which lines are most often edited with a very specific nuance” that favors Israeli narratives.
A shaky arrangement has long existed between the IDF censor and the domestic and foreign press, forcing journalists to frequently self-censor their reporting for fear of running afoul of prohibited subjects, losing their press credentials, and potentially being forced to offer public apology. CNN, like other American broadcasters, has repeatedly agreed to submit footage recorded in Gaza to the military censor prior to airing it in exchange for limited access to the strip, drawing criticism from those who say the censor is providing a filtered view of events unfolding on the ground.
“When you have a protocol that routes all stories through one checkpoint, you’re interested in control, and the question is who is controlling the story?” Jim Naureckas, editor of the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, told The Intercept.
CNN’s team in Jerusalem are the “people closest to the Israeli government,” Naureckas added. “In a situation where a government has been credibly accused of singling out journalists for violent attacks in order to suppress information, to give that government a heightened role in deciding what is news and what isn’t news is really disturbing.”
While CNN has used its standing to obtain raw footage of human suffering inside Gaza, it has also pushed out near-daily updates delivered directly from the IDF to its American and international viewers and embedded reporters alongside Israel soldiers fighting in the war.
Early in the war, on October 26, CNN’s News Standards and Practices division sent an email to staff outlining how they should write about the war.
“Hamas controls the government in Gaza and we should describe the Ministry of Health as ‘Hamas-controlled’ whenever we are referring to casualty statistics or other claims related to the present conflict. If the underlying statistics have been derived from the ministry of Health in Gaza, we should note that fact and that this part of the Ministry is ‘Hamas-controlled’ even if the statistics are released by the West Bank part of the ministry or elsewhere.”
The email goes on to acknowledge CNN’s responsibility to cover the human cost of the war but couches that responsibility in the need to “cover the broader current geopolitical and historical context of the story” while continuing to “remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of Israeli civilians.”
The email further instructed reporters and editors to “make it clear to our audiences whether either or both sides have provided verifiable evidence to support their claims.”
In a separate directive dated November 2, Senior Director of News Standards and Practices David Lindsey cautioned reporters from relaying statements from Hamas. “As the Israel-Gaza war continues, Hamas representatives are engaging in inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda. Most of it has been said many times before and is not newsworthy. We should be careful not to give it a platform.” He added, though, that “if a senior Hamas official makes a claim or threat that is editorially relevant, such as changing their messaging or trying to rewrite events, we can use it if it’s accompanied by greater context.”
The language of the directives mirror similar orders from CNN management at the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, when Chair Walter Isaacson ordered foreign correspondents at the network to play down civilian deaths and remind readers that the violence they were witnessing was a direct result of the attacks on September 11.
Also in October, CNN hired a former IDF soldier to contribute writing and reporting to CNN’s war coverage. Tamar Michaelis’s first byline appears on October 17, 10 days after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel. Since then, her name has appeared on dozens of stories citing the IDF spokesperson and relaying information about the IDF’s operations in the Gaza Strip. At least one story bearing only her byline is little more than a direct statement released from the IDF.
According to her Facebook profile, Tamar Michaelis served in the IDF’s Spokesperson Unit, a division of the Israeli military charged with carrying out positive PR both domestically and abroad. (Last year, the Spokesperson Unit was forced to issue a public apology for conducting psychological operations, or “psyops,” against Israeli civilians.) Michaelis recently locked her profile, which does not indicate the dates of her service in the IDF, and she did not respond to a request for comment.
“Tamar Michaelis worked with CNN on a freelance basis for a few months last year, and worked in the same way as any freelancer, within our normal guidelines,” the CNN spokesperson wrote.
CNN’s Gaza war coverage, regardless of where it originates, has been subject to the news organization’s internal review process for reporting on Israel and Palestine. According to an email reviewed by The Intercept, CNN expanded its review team over the summer — as the highly controversial overhaul of Israel’s judicial system moved through Israel’s Parliament — to include a handful of editors outside of Israel, in an effort to streamline the process.
In a July email to CNN staff, Jerusalem Bureau Chief Richard Greene wrote that the policy exists “because everything we write or broadcast about Israel or the Palestinians is scrutinized by partisans on all sides. The Jerusalem bureau aims to be a safety net so we don’t use imprecise language or words that may sound impartial but can have coded meanings here.”
But because the protocol could slow down the publication process, Greene wrote, “we have created (wait for it…..)
The Jerusalem SecondEyes alias!”
The CNN spokesperson told The Intercept that Jerusalem SecondEyes “was created to make this process as swift as possible as well as bring more expert eyes to staff it across the day, particularly when Jerusalem is dark.” The spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether CNN has a similar review process in place for other coverage areas.
“Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility.”
The CNN staff member described how the policy works in practice. “‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the person said. “Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.”
