Reporters Without Borders | First One Through

Over twenty years ago, Jewish Russian-Israeli Natan Sharansky coined the “3D Test of Anti-Semitism: Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimization.” Each one comes for Jews in their own unique way: demonization actively incites hatred; delegitimization undermines support structures over time; and double standards drips slowly into society, barely noticed and acknowledged.

Consider the assassination of noted terrorist Osama Bin Laden by the United States. World leaders applauded the American attack, thousands of miles from its shores, as justice served. Yet when Israel eliminated the terrorist Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, the world lined up to condemn Israel. Hypocrisy masked by time, place and protagonists concealed the rank Jew-hatred.

It happens to Israel frequently.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in France which attempts to get information out to the world regardless of frontiers, and to protect journalists. Its tagline does not clarify that it does this selectively, such as toeing the line with the French government, and persistently coming for Israel.

For years, RSF pushed to get Russia Today (RT) off the air and internet in France. RSF claimed RT was “Russia’s war propaganda machine,” and successfully got Channel One Russia off the air which it labeled “an important part of the state’s disinformation arsenal in Russia, where TV continues to be a very influential medium.”

*RSF worked to ban media outlet RT because it claimed it is a disinformation outlet*

Yet when Israel banned Qatar-owned Al Jazeera from Israel in May 2024, which had long served as an open propaganda outlet for the political-terrorist group Hamas, RSF went nuts. The group’s Middle East leader said “The Israeli parliament’s vote to censor Al Jazeera, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s defamatory remarks about its journalists are unacceptable. RSF demands that the Israeli authorities end their aggressive harassment of Al Jazeera. Such censorship legislation, under the guise of democratic regulation, implicitly targeting a specific media outlet, creates a precedent fraught with dangers for journalism in Israel.”

*RSF didn’t only object to Israel’s ban of Hamas’s propaganda arm of Al Jazeera but accused Israel of “persecution”*

RSF did not only defend the Hamas mouthpiece headquartered in Qatar, its entire framework of the Gaza war completely sides with Hamas. Examples of Hamas simply being annoying while Israel is the source of violence include: “Journalists suspected of collaborating with Israel are hampered in their work by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, while also enduring the violence of the Israeli blockade on the territory,” and blaming Israel for starting the latest war with “Press freedom, media plurality and editorial independence have been increasingly restricted in Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, launched by Israel on 7 October 2023 following the deadly Hamas attack,” which would be like blaming the U.S.A. for starting a war with Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack.

In January 2025, the Palestinian Authority also shut down Al Jazeera in the parts of the West Bank it controls, stating the company’s websites have “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife.” Israel went further and accused several Al Jazeera journalists of participating in the October 7 massacre. Whether causing “strife” or participating in lynchings, the media outlet has been blamed by both sides in fueling the war.

The double standards of Reporters Without Borders attempting to protect the Hamas propaganda outlet of Al Jazeera during the terrorist group’s horrific war but pushing to ban Russian media in Europe is appalling. It also raises questions about the NGO’s biases.

This isn’t a defense of censorship but a demand for consistency. If Al Jazeera’s ability to operate is sacred, then so is Russia Today’s. If RT can be banned for spreading propaganda and fueling war, then so can Al Jazeera. RSF’s double standard is damning.

The reality of today is there is no neutral and completely fact-based press. Government-owned media like Russia Today and Al Jazeera should fall under a single bucket of treatment. Ban them or air them with wrappers that identify them as foreign propaganda outlets so viewers understand the nature of the content.

Freedom of the press is not a weapon to be wielded selectively. But for groups like Reporters Without Borders, it increasingly is. And that should concern everyone who actually believes in a free and honest media.

Banning Qatar’s Al Jazeera Is Only News Sometimes (December 2024)

US Hypocrisy On Terrorist Media (April 2024)

The Scary Growth of Terrorist Propaganda (November 2021)

Nexus of Terrorism Hypocrisy: UN, Qatar and Hamas (June 2021)

Al Jazeera’s Lies Call for Jihad Against the Jewish State (November 2017)

Journalists Killed in 2016 #AlternativeFacts (January 2017)

Liberal Hypocrisy on Foreign Government Intervention (October 2016)

An Easy Boycott: Al Jazeera (Qatar) (April 2015)

There were several dozens of journalists killed around the world in 2016. The exact number seems hard to pin down.

According to UNESCO, 101 journalists were killed. It considered Syria as the most dangerous country for journalists, and elaborated that “the most lives were lost in the Arab States, where the armed conflicts in the Syrian Arab Republic, Iraq and Yemen have claimed the largest share. Media operating in Latin America and the Caribbean saw 28 casualties, including bloggers and freelancers, constituting the region as second deadliest in 2016.”

However, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) counted 93 journalists as targeted and killed. They note that another 29 were killed in accidents or natural disasters bringing the total to 122. IFJ listed the most lethal country for journalists as Iraq (15 killed) followed by Afghanistan (13). Syria ranked as #6 with 6 killed.

Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) tallied 74 journalists murdered, including non-professional “citizen-journalists.” RSF tagged Syria as the deadliest country. “Syria continues to be the world’s deadliest place for journalists, followed by Afghanistan. Worldwide, two thirds of the journalists killed this year were in war zones. Almost all of them were local journalists, now that news organizations are increasingly reluctant to send their reporters to dangerous hotspots abroad.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) announced that 48 journalists were killed in 2016, with clear motives. Syria led the list with 14, followed by other Arab and Muslim countries: Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

So how many journalists were killed in 2016? 122? 101? 93? 74? 48?

How did four “non-partisan” and “reputable” organizations come to such different conclusions? Did some organization include accidents while others did not? Perhaps one included civilian-journalists and bloggers while another just counted professionals. Maybe some groups did not include peripheral casualties if the journalist wasn’t specifically targeted.

All possibilities. As is bias.

Consider that IFJ has a history of declaring that anyone who self-declares as a journalist is a journalist. So if a terrorist operative used press credentials to infiltrate certain areas to commit murder, that person counted as a journalist by IFJ, but not always by other organizations.

In searching for a reason, maybe one could argue that a higher total of injured journalists heightened the importance of umbrella organizations like IFJ. But that would leave a question of why RSF and CPJ would post such low totals compared to UNESCO.

Maybe the reason for one country getting a higher total was purely innocent. If a Syrian journalist was killed in Turkey maybe one organization listed the murder as happening in Turkey, while another focused on the place where the journalist reported.

Anti-ISIS Syrian journalist Zaher al-Shurqat killed in Turkey in May 2016

Beyond listing the raw “facts,” UNESCO, RSF and CPJ reached conclusions based on those facts that the most lethal country in the world for journalists was Syria, even though IFJ announced that the country wasn’t even in the top five. IFJ stated that the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist was the Asia-Pacific region, specifically Philippines, Pakistan and India. UNESCO, RSF and CPJ claimed that it is the Arab states. Which was right?

The IFJ website covers the entire world by region and claims to be devoted to a mission beyond politics. “The IFJ does not subscribe to any given political viewpoint, but promotes human rights, democracy and pluralism.” But the English site reserves reporting about the Middle East to only be in Arabic – clearly limiting the audience of readers to a narrow segment of the world population. Why would it deliberately produce an entire section in Arabic? To educate the region that it scores the lowest in regards to “human rights, democracy and pluralism?” To make it impossible for non-Arabic speakers to read about the state of journalists in the Arab world?

In 2017, the world was intrigued by the term “Alternative Facts,” and reacted to it as if it were a new phantom reality. In truth, people and organizations have always looked at the same situation and extracted DIFFERENT FACTS, not only different conclusions. Sometimes the reasons are apparent and other times not. Often one can see the motivating factors which led to a party extracting and expressing particular facts and conclusions, and there are times when the listener is simply stumped.

Does it make the party sharing the facts a liar? Biased? Uninformed? Maybe, maybe and maybe.

As the consumers of information that is oftentimes murky, seek the source and basis of the “facts,” and don’t only rely on someone’s conclusions.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Social Media’s “Fake News” and Mainstream Media’s Half-Truths

Journalists in the Middle East

Israel’s Freedom of the Press; New York Times “Nonsense”

New York Times Confusion on Free Speech

Selective Speech

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