A REUTERS journalist has quit the news agency alleging it had a "role in justifying and enabling" Israel's "assassination" of journalists in Gaza.
Canadian photojournalist Valerie Zink said she had worked for Reuters for the last eight years. Her work has been published by outlets such as the New York Times and Al Jazeera, as well as other organisations across North America, Asia and Europe.
In a statement posted on social media in the hours after Israel bombed Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, killing 20 people – including five journalists – in two separate airstrikes, Zink announced she had quit the agency, citing its response to previous Israeli attacks on media colleagues in Gaza.
She made particular reference to Reuters' reporting on Israel's killing of prominent Al-Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and six other media workers on August 10, saying the agency had "perpetuate[d] Israel's propaganda". She said it had been "wilfully abandoning the most basic responsibility of journalism" by publishing the "baseless claim" from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) that Al-Sharif was an operative for Hamas.
Zink said she could no longer wear her press pass without feeling "shame and grief", as she shared an image of her press card snapped in half alongside her statement.
She wrote: "At this point it’s become impossible for me to maintain a relationship with Reuters given its role in justifying and enabling the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza. I owe my colleagues in Palestine at least this much, and so much more.
I can’t in good conscience continue to work for Reuters given their betrayal of journalists in Gaza and culpability in the assassination of 245 our colleagues. pic.twitter.com/WO6tjHqDIU
— Valerie Zink (@valeriezink) August 26, 2025
"When Israel murdered Anas Al-Sharif, together with the entire Al-Jazeera crew in Gaza City on August 10, Reuters chose to publish Israel’s entirely baseless claim that Al-Sharif was a Hamas operative – one of countless lies that media outlets like Reuters have dutifully repeated and dignified."
Zink added: "Reuters’ willingness to perpetuate Israel’s propaganda has not spared their own reporters from Israel’s genocide. Five more journalists, including Reuters cameraman Hossam Al-Masri, were among 20 people killed this morning [Monday] in another attack on Nasser hospital."
She said that "western media is directly culpable for creating the conditions" in which such an attack can happen, adding: "Every major outlet – from the New York Times to the Washington Post, from AP to Reuters – has served as a conveyor belt for Israeli propaganda, sanitizing war crimes and dehumanizing victims, abandoning their colleagues and their alleged commitment to true and ethical reporting.”
Zink continued: "By repeating Israel’s genocidal fabrications without determining if they have any credibility – wilfully abandoning the most basic responsibility of journalism – Western media outlets have made possible the killing of more journalists in two years on one tiny strip of land than in WWI, WWII, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Ukraine combined, to say nothing of starving an entire population, shredding its children, and burning people alive.
"The fact that Anas Al-Sharif’s work won a Pulitzer Prize for Reuters did not compel them to come to his defence when Israeli occupation forces placed him on a 'hit list' of journalists accused of being Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.
"It did not compel them to come to his defence when he appealed to international media for protection after an Israeli military spokesperson posted a video making clear their intention to assassinate him following a report he did on the growing famine. It did not compel them to report on his death honestly when he was hunted and killed weeks later."
Zink said that while she "valued" the work she has contributed to Reuters, she could no longer "conceive of wearing this press pass with anything but deep shame and grief".
She added: "I don’t know what it means to begin to honour the courage and sacrifice of journalists in Gaza – the bravest and best to ever live – but going forward I will direct whatever contributions I have to offer with that front of mind."
Reuters came under fire from its own journalists due to its coverage of the killing of Al-Sharif, with several employees accusing the newswire of pro-Israel bias, as reported in Declassified UK.
In the attack on Nasser Hospital on Monday, one of the five journalists killed, Hussam al-Masri, worked for Reuters.
In a statement, Reuters said it was "devastated" to learn of al-Masri's death and added that it was "urgently seeking more information".
Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted for arrest for alleged crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, claimed the strikes on the hospital were a "tragic mishap".
