GOP State AGs Go After US Media Over Hamas Coverage

ANALYSIS – Since it is highly unlikely that the Biden administration will enforce the federal laws against supporting terrorism, to include Hamas sympathizers and Jew haters, it is up to the state attorney generals (AGs) from our Republican red states to take up that challenge.

And so, they are. The AGs of 14 states have warned The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, and AP that they are under observation over alleged support of Hamas.

This, following the shocking discoveries that certain media outlets had “troubling ties” with terror organizations in Gaza and some contracted local staff even joined Hamas terrorists in their brutal carnage across Israel on October 7.

The Israeli watchdog group Honest reporting, claimed that cameramen working for the prominent news outlets noted above arrived at the Israeli border during the early morning hours of the terror rampage, raising questions about whether they had any foreknowledge of the attack.

The 14 AGs sent a letter to the major media outlets warning them to ensure their “hiring practices conform to the laws forbidding material support for terror organizations.”

The U.S. government “defines material support to include ‘any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments . . . expert advice or assistance . . . communications equipment, facilities . . . and transportation, except medicine or religious materials,’” the AGs explained.

Meanwhile terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, “are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that [criminal] conduct,” under existing material support to terror statutes.

The letter was signed by the AGs from Iowa, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Texas, Louisiana, Montana, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee.

“We will continue to follow your reporting to ensure that your organizations do not violate any federal or State laws by giving material support to terrorists abroad. Now your organizations are on notice. Follow the law,” the letter said.

Fox News reported:

Republican Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird spearheaded the letter, which detailed concerns that journalists embedded with Hamas may actually have deep connections with the terrorist organization “and may have participated in the October 7 attack.”

“Reporting credibly alleges that some of the individuals that your outlets hire have deep and troubling ties to Hamas—and may have participated in the October 7 attack. In the wake of those alarming reports, some of you have cut ties with these so-called journalists whose connections to terror groups have become too obvious to hide. Good. But one factor in determining whether an organization has provided material support for terrorism is that it be ‘knowing,’” the letter states.

Fox News added:

The attorneys general said the four outlets have a responsibility to fully vet potential hires and ensure they have no connections to terrorist organizations before putting them on the payroll and embedding them during armed conflicts.

“If your outlet’s current hiring practices led you to give material support to terrorists, you must change these policies going forward. Otherwise, we must assume any future support of terrorist organizations by your stringers, correspondents, contractors, and similar employees is knowing behavior,” they wrote.

Despite the legal warning, the news networks, except for CNN, defiantly announced that they would continue to work with these Gaza-based photographers and reporters even though “material support of terrorist organizations is illegal.”

Ynetnews reported:

The New York Times responded to the letter requesting the Attorney Generals to “refrain from trafficking in disinformation and insinuation” and deny the allegations, “there is no ‘long record of paying terrorists,’ there are no ‘transactions with terrorists.'”

The New York Times doubled down. “The only connection The New York Times has to Hamas is that we report on the organization fearlessly and at times at great risk, bringing essential information to the public about the terrorist attacks in Israel and the ongoing conflict in Gaza.”

Communications Director Charlie Stadtlander said adding that such accusations “endanger the lives of our journalists and the safety of American news organizations. They dishonor the heroic work that journalists in Gaza and elsewhere are doing against terrible odds to report what is happening on the ground. And they feed the false narratives that authoritarian regimes weaponize to demonize the press and justify laws that suppress press freedom.”

Preempting The Times rebuttal, the AGs letter notes that material support statutes “have survived First Amendment scrutiny” and that a law “distinguishes material support for terrorism from protected speech.”

“The First Amendment and core free-speech principles protect the right to hold even disgusting views. For example, this letter does not call for any action regarding the New York Times’s decision to hire a reporter to cover the ongoing war in Israel–despite that reporter’s praise for Adolf Hitler and the ‘state of harmony’ Hitler achieved while perpetrating the Holocaust” the letter states.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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