The ABC lists as journalists the same terror-linked Gazans the BBC in the UK is now reviewing, including 22 people the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) struck off its own register for "engagement in combat". The national broadcaster now faces the same test over two charts of its own.

When asked for comment on the matter an ABC spokesmen told Rebel News:

"The ABC is aware of the reports. Nothing further to add at this time."

The BBC moved after the Telegraph reported on 26 September that 53 people the corporation had counted among journalists killed in Gaza had ties to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) or other armed groups. In a statement to the paper, the BBC said: "In light of the CPJ's June 2026 update, we are looking at those included in the piece." It has already quietly deleted one name, Ibrahim Sheikh Ali, from its Arabic-language roll of 179 Gaza dead.

The BBC has reported the deaths of 53 “journalists” in Gaza who have been claimed as terrorists by Hamas and other groups.

Some of them took part in the Oct 7 attacks and several have been hailed as “martyrs” by their terrorist organisations.

🔗: https://t.co/RLgGRqi3TP pic.twitter.com/2Qr0DYte71

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) September 26, 2026

The ABC has made no such move. Its own roll of "Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023", published on 27 August 2025 in an article by Maddy Morwood and Lewis Wiseman with wires, credited "ABC News: Maddy Morwood", names at least 171 of the BBC's 179. 

Among those same journalists are 22 of the 24 BBC-listed names that CPJ has since removed for taking part in combat. The New York-based press freedom group took off seven before June 2026 and a further 17 in a review it completed on 24 September.

The ABC lists "Abdallah Darwish, photojournalist for Al Aqsa TV", whom the Telegraph reports joined the 7 October massacre alongside Hamas's Qassam Brigades. It lists "Mustafa Bakir, journalist and cameraman for Al Aqsa TV", whom Hamas itself described as a Rafah Brigade field commander, according to the Telegraph. It lists "Yacoub Bursh, director general of Namaa Radio", who the paper says appears on a Qassam Brigades "martyrs" page. CPJ has removed all three for combat.

🚨 ABC’s Anti-Israel Bias Finally Confronted — at Hostage Square LIVE!

WATCH & SHARE what happened when I confronted ABC’s top propagandist, Matthew Doran — the man who’s been lying to Australians about Israel and Hamas for the past two years.

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— Avi Yemini (@OzraeliAvi) October 13, 2025

The ABC cannot say it was never warned. On 27 December 2024, its Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran reported that five staff of Al Quds Today Television had been killed in an Israeli strike. His story carried the Israeli military's charge that they "were Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists", and went further: "One local journalist has told the ABC that Al Quds Today Television is associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

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Eight months later the ABC put all five on its roll of dead journalists anyway. Faisal Abu Al-Qumsan, Fadi Hassouna, Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Ali, Ayman Al-Jadi and Mohammed Al-Ladda each appear as a "journalist for the satellite channel Al-Quds Today", with no mention of what the broadcaster's own correspondent had been told. Sheikh Ali is the very name the BBC has now pulled from its list, and the ABC still carries him.

The ABC then published the names again. On 10 December 2025, Doran co-wrote a report with Basel Hindeleh headlined "Gaza named deadliest place for journalists in 2025", carrying a second IFJ-sourced chart credited "ABC News: Basel Hindeleh". Its 253 entries include the same 22 people CPJ has removed for combat, among them Darwish, Bursh, Bakir, Rizq Abu Shakyan and Hassan Farajallah. Almost a year after his own report carried the PIJ claim, Doran shared the byline on a story whose chart again listed all five Al Quds Today staff as journalists.

A wire-based ABC report on 26 May 2025 likewise called Hassan Majdi Abu Warda a local journalist killed in Jabalia, though the media watchdog HonestReporting alleges a PIJ martyr notice places him in a sniper unit.

Both charts draw on figures from the International Federation of Journalists, but the broadcaster chose to publish them as its own, under ABC News credits on a taxpayer-funded website. The August chart has stood for more than a year while CPJ struck name after name off its own register.

Taking reports from journalists from Gaza purely on trust is becoming harder to defend now that Motaz Azaiza, the photographer TIME placed on its 2024 list of the world's 100 most influential people, has described how the Strip's media worked. He spoke in Arabic on Ahmad al-Biqawi's Taqarob podcast, published on 3 September.

"Hamas has its official media, and we all dealt with Hamas's media," Azaiza said, calling the movement "the de facto government". Anyone whose work did not suit Hamas, he said, would "go behind the sun", a local expression for disappearing. He described "Hamas's Smart group" on WhatsApp, saying "all of Gaza's journalists are in it" and "its manager was the media director of the Rafah crossing".

When someone leaving an ambulance curses Hamas on camera, "the people around him turn the camera off him," Azaiza said, and he admitted he was wary at first of airing such scenes because "I had never seen a journalist from Gaza publish something like this." Footage he shot of a crowd beating Israeli hostages from a Qassam Brigades jeep on 7 October 2023 never went out at all. "I didn't publish it," he told Biqawi, saying Israel could have identified those in it.

Should the ABC now review its charts as the BBC is doing? Every reason the BBC has to check its roll applies to the ABC's, and the ABC has one more in Doran's report. Taxpayers are entitled to expect the national broadcaster to test both charts against CPJ's removals and correct them.

The BBC has not said which names are under review or when it will report, and the Telegraph has so far named only nine of its 53. The ABC's August chart, including all 22 names CPJ removed for combat, remained online on Sunday.