The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

For nearly three years, Motaz Azaiza was not simply covered by the international media. He was repeatedly elevated by it.

A review of 47 articles citing Azaiza between October 2023 and September 24, 2026 found a striking shift. Before September 19, 2026, 28 articles were published treating Azaiza as a legitimating figure, a credible witness, profile subject, or honoree.

From the first months of the war in Gaza through September 2026, major Western news outlets returned to Azaiza in successive waves of sympathetic coverage, profiling and interviewing him, showcasing his photographs, and presenting him as a firsthand witness to the war.

In 2023, as Azaiza’s following surged, outlets including NBC News, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The LA Times featured him as one of the prominent Palestinian voices documenting the war. The Guardian described Gaza’s citizen journalists as chronicling life inside the war, while the LA Times presented Azaiza in coverage of journalists risking their lives in Gaza.

The attention intensified in early 2024. When Azaiza left Gaza in January 2024, major outlets profiled him again, highlighting his photography. Sky News interviewed Azaiza repeatedly in 2024, including segments in which he described the devastation he had witnessed. The Guardian later included him among “the inspiring people we met around the world in 2024.”

And the coverage continued into 2025 and 2026. The New York Times cited him in its analysis of changing social-media narratives around the war, CNN profiled his life in the United States, describing his photographs as showing “the heartbreak of war,” and AFP included him among journalists honored at a conference in Doha.

Yet when he revealed in a September 2026 podcast conversation the depth to which Gazan journalists cooperated with Hamas, including being in a WhatsApp group affiliated with Hamas, the same coverage from major outlets has almost completely disappeared.

Of the 12 outlets that had cited Azaiza before September 19, 2026, including CNN, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Sky News, all 12 remained silent. Of the outlets monitored, only the LA Times covered the controversy.

Despite publishing a combined 813 articles on other subjects between September 19 and September 24, 2026, the vast majority did not mention Azaiza or the new controversy surrounding him, even though they had previously given him glowing reviews.

When Azaiza’s story fit the role of Gaza’s courageous witness, major outlets repeatedly returned to him. But when a major story raised questions about his legitimacy, the outlets that had given him the largest platforms largely went quiet.

Why, after spending years telling audiences to listen to him, do so many of those same outlets have nothing to say now?

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.