On October 7, 2023, Israeli reporter Shai Regev, who worked for Maariv newspaper’s celebrity news and entertainment section TMI, was killed while attending the Nova Music Festival in Re’im, five kilometers (about three miles) from the Gaza-Israel barrier, which was attacked by Hamas’s military wing Al-Qassam Brigades that morning.
CPJ had removed this journalist from its database because, according to its initial research, her outlet confirmed that she was not on assignment, nor had the opportunity to report on Hamas, before her death. She was later reinstated after Golan Bar-Yosef, Maariv’s editor-in-chief, later informed CPJ that Regev was on assignment and was sending news updates during the attack. The journalist’s sister Nitzan and Anat Saragusti, the head of the Union of Journalists in Israel, confirmed that Regev was an active journalist at the time of her death.
CPJ continues to investigate cases involving journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war and routinely reviews and updates its documentation when credible new information becomes available.