THE Committee to Protect Journalists has spent the war in Gaza producing the number everyone cites — 209 at last count. It is the figure that goes into headlines, into UN statements, into the columns of people like me who want a shorthand for a toll too large to itemise. It is also, CPJ now tells us, a number that just got smaller — 20 names have been removed from the list: eight because Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published obituaries claiming the dead as combatants, and 12 for reasons it hasn’t detailed.

CPJ says it has always excluded anyone with evidence of direct participation in hostilities, consistent with international humanitarian law, under which journalists affiliated with non-state actors remain civilians unless they fight. CPJ’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg says the organisation is reviewing every name on its lists to make sure no one engaged in combat remains. That review is expected to finish this month.

Online, the removals were read as something else: a quiet redefinition of who counts as a journalist, timed to placate critics who have spent two years accusing dead Palestinian reporters of having been militants in disguise. CPJ has now pushed back. Recently, its board voted to affirm the organisation’s........

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