Wall Street Journal faces scrutiny over unconfirmed UNRWA-Hamas allegations: Traffic light
LONDON: The Wall Street Journal is still unable to verify claims from a January report suggesting links between staff at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East and Hamas militants.
According to the US news website Semafor, the WSJ's editor-in-chief, who oversees standards, has privately admitted that allegations based on Israeli intelligence reports may not be substantiated.
In an email seen by Semaphore, Elena Cherney, the news editor, acknowledged that Israel's claims lacked solid evidence, but argued that the original reports were neither inaccurate nor misleading.
“The fact that Israel's claims were not supported by reliable evidence does not mean that our reports were inaccurate or misleading, that we retracted them, or that there is a correctable error,” Cherney wrote in an email.
The January report, described as one of the “biggest and most compelling stories of the war”, claimed that 12 UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 attack on Israel, with 10 percent of the agency's 12,000 staff in Gaza said to have ties to Hamas.
This story, based on Israeli intelligence, was later disputed by several international organizations and the UN itself after an independent investigation.
The story had significant repercussions, including a heavy psychological impact on UNRWA workers and the freezing of $450 million in aid by various countries at a critical moment for Gaza, which is facing the threat of famine.
Semaphore said WSJ reporters tried and failed to confirm the 10 percent claim central to the story, raising concerns about the Israeli nature of the story.
“Our coverage of UNRWA is part of a long reporting effort on the war in Gaza that involves staff across the newsroom,” a WSJ spokesman said, confirming the paper's January story and subsequent coverage.
The incident highlighted internal friction within the WSJ newsroom since the conflict began, including concerns over the leadership of deputy Middle East bureau chief Shayndi Raice and the controversial social media activity of Carrie Keller-Lynn, the story's author.
The WSJ also faced scrutiny for its unbalanced coverage of events in Gaza, with Richard Boudreaux, a former editor of the Standards, acknowledging that the paper “leaned too heavily on Israeli voices and did not include enough Arab perspectives or expert sources.”
