A recent scandal spotlights the AP's connection to Palestinian Hamas terrorists and also implicates Pictures of the Year International (POY), which bestows an annual photojournalism award.

During the October 7, 2023 Palestinian Hamas surprise attack on Israeli concert attendees, terrorists abducted 22-year-old Shani Louk. The brutal thugs tortured and raped Shani and later triumphantly parading her naked, broken body on the back of a truck.

As noted in a March 29 Jerusalem Post article, a freelance photographer who had been officially embedded with Hamas, and is alleged to have had prior knowledge of the violent terrorists' pogrom, snapped an up-close photo of the grisly truck spectacle.

That photographer was Ali Mahmud. Associated Press executives submitted his photo to Missouri-headquartered POY, for consideration in that organization's annual Pictures of the Year awards. 

Mahmud took home a POY trophy. In a March 27 ynetnews.com report, Special Envoy For Combatting Antisemitism Michal Cotler-Wunsh branded POY's bestowal the "normalization and mainstreaming of Hamas and other terror proxies of murderous authoritarian regimes."

The group Honest Reporting had previously found use of Hamas-linked freelancers like Mahmud by not only the Associated Press, but also Reuters and CNN. In a March 22 X communication, Honest Reporting wrote: "Congratulations to @AP for winning a Pictures of the Year Award. How does it feel to do so on the backs of Palestinian photojournalists who infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7 and took photos like the one below of Shani Louk's dead body in a Hamas pickup?"

To be fair, a reasonable argument can be mounted that photojournalism must be pursued without prejudice, so that its product can objectively reflect events. Upon that evidence, public opinion can then be formed. 

That's a persuasive position, one with which I agree. Indeed, in the ynetnews article, the murdered Shani's father, Nissam, said "It's good that the photo won the prize, this is one of the most important photos in the last 50 years... I think it's a good thing to inform the future... This is history. In 100 years they will look and know what happened here."

But once the horrific act occurred, and a record of it had been preserved, AP executives were free to render appropriate condemnations. Instead, they contrived to reap advantage from it.

Image: POY.org