Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wants answers from news organizations that used firsthand images and information from Hamas' Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel shortly after the massacre began.
Reuters, The Associated Press, The New York Times, and CNN were among the media entities that used photos taken by freelance journalists who accompanied the terrorists on their rampage and may have been informed of it beforehand, investigative website HonestReporting said Wednesday.
Cotton on Thursday sent letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland and to executives of CNN, the AP, Reuters, and the Times. Cotton demanded that Garland open an investigation into the outlets, and the news organizations were asked to provide answers as to their involvement with Hamas.
"If your employees, as part of their work, participated in terrorist activities or if your organization or employees provided material support (including any funding) to Hamas, the leadership of your organization may also face criminal penalties under federal law," Cotton wrote to the news organizations.
The Times on Friday responded to Cotton, saying that his letter "exacerbates" the "spread of disinformation and incendiary rhetoric" around journalists covering the war.
"You are merely parroting disinformation harvested from the internet based on a website that has conceded it had no evidence for its claims," Times Vice President and Deputy General Counsel David McGraw wrote in a letter to Cotton.
McGraw added that "[n]o employee of The Times was embedded with Hamas, or had advance knowledge of the attack, or played any role in the savage massacre of that day."
Cotton then responded to McGraw's letter.
"Falsehoods circulated on the internet are not 'reports,'" Cotton, repeating McGraw's line, posted on X. "The @NYTimes just described its own 'newsroom.'
"What you don't say is that your freelance photographers—pictured riding with the Hamas terrorists on 10/7—had no advance knowledge. Is that also your claim?" Cotton added.
The New York Times issued a statement Thursday denying accusations that it had advance knowledge of the Oct. 7 attack.
The AP, Reuters, and CNN on Thursday disavowed any foreknowledge of the attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 Israelis and left hundreds more injured or taken hostage by the Palestinian terrorist group.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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