Legacy Journalists from NYT, CNN Are Mentors in a Fellowship Founded for Pro-Israel “Information War”

When Israel launched its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, following Hamas’s military offensive, Los Angeles-based journalist Jacki Karsh felt she had to do something.

“October 7th happened and everything changed for me because I knew this was going to be a war of information the second it happened,” Karsh said in a December 2024 interview with Los Angeles Mom Magazine.

She went on to quote an October 2023 post on X by Aviva Klompas, the former head of speechwriting at the Israeli mission to the UN, that said: “The IDF is going to attack our enemies by land, sea, and air. And the rest of us are going to fight on the battlegrounds of academia, law, business, media, and every other damn front we can think of.” Commenting on the post, Karsh said, “So this is my front. Journalism is my front. And I am doing what I can.”

Karsh, who describes herself as “a six-time Emmy-nominated multimedia journalist,” said among the many incidents that convinced her to try and “shift some of the narrative” on Israel was when Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City was bombed on October 17, 2023.

The attack quickly became a topic of dispute in the U.S. media after the Israeli military denied responsibility and blamed it on an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants. “The story was reported incorrectly, and then the correction was so muted, it was not like, ‘Wow! We just completely messed up this story,’” Karsh told eJewishPhilanthropy this past August. “They were getting more information from the terrorists* who were responsible for Oct. 7.”

[*IAK NOTE: The use of the word “terrorist” for a group that resists occupation and oppression is a political, not fact-based choice. In reality, international law supports the efforts of resistance groups against an occupying power, the UN extending that right to the point of armed resistance. Hamas was exercising – albeit imperfectly – its internationally recognized right to resist the oppressor and occupier of its people.]

In November 2023, Karsh first presented the idea of starting a journalism fellowship to the Jewish Federation, a pro-Israel group that says part of its mission is to “support a secure State of Israel,” and where Karsh has served as a board member in Los Angeles for several years.

Founded with her husband in 2025, the Jacki and Jeff Karsh Journalism Fellowship describes itself as “the world’s only journalism fellowship solely dedicated to Jewish topics” and bills itself as “resolutely nonpartisan.” The fellowship began accepting applications in July, and its inaugural class of fellows will begin the program in January 2026. It centers around three retreats, held in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York, where up to ten fellows will engage with “leading journalists, scholars, policymakers, and innovators,” holding sessions on topics including “Middle East Misinformation” and “How to Cover Antisemitism.”

In response to an inquiry from Drop Site about how the Karsh fellowship can be “resolutely nonpartisan” when the founder claims it was created to help Israel win an “information war,” the director of the fellowship, Rob Eshmen, responded in an emailed statement: “The Karsh Journalism Fellowship trains and supports journalists committed to fairness and accuracy on Israel and Jewish issues.

Jacki Karsh’s guiding principle is simple: the best response to misinformation and disinformation on these issues is excellent journalism grounded in evidence, integrity, and independence.” He added, “Our mentors and fellows will represent a wide range of political and cultural perspectives, and we encourage open, nuanced dialogue on complex issues.”

The fellowship has attracted 16 scholars and journalists from several mainstream publications to serve as mentors, including The Atlantic, Spectrum News, The Spectator, Ynet, Times of Israel, and two journalists at The New York Times: Jodi Rudoren, the former Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, who now oversees newsletters for the paper, including The Morning and DealBook; and Sharon Otterman, who covers education, health, and religion in the New York City area for the Times and who has closely covered the Palestine solidarity campus protests at Columbia and other universities.

The New York Times handbook of “values and practices” for its journalists states they “should take care to ensure” any public engagements—including giving speeches, participating on panels, teaching classes, and presenting at conferences—do not “create an actual or apparent conflict of interest, or undermine public trust in The Times’s independence.”

In response to an inquiry from Drop Site about whether having staffed reporters mentoring for a program whose founder has said it exists to help Israel win an “information war” represented a conflict with the Times’ standards, spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said in a statement: “It’s ridiculous to suggest participation as a mentor in this fellowship is anything other than helping to build the reporting skills necessary for the next generation of independent journalists.”

Other fellowship mentors include CNN’s Van Jones, who recently issued an apology after drawing intense criticism for comments he made on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday making light of images of dead Palestinian children and saying they were part of an Iran and Qatar disinformation campaign; and Michael Powell, a staff writer at the Atlantic and a former national reporter at The New York Times, whose recent articles include “The Double Standard in the Human-Rights World,” that criticizes groups like Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders for becoming “stridently critical of Israel.”

As the founder of the fellowship, Karsh has been an open and die-hard supporter of Israel in both her articles and public comments.

“The Israel story is on the facts side, so you’re already starting from a good place because the truth is at the end of the day—the IDF is the most moral army in the world,” she said in an interview with StandWithUs Campus in March. “The Israeli population is made up of Christians, Druze and Arabs, and Israelis, Jews—it runs the gamut—and so there’s no apartheid there, and I think if you just go through each of those things systematically, the facts are on the Israeli side.”

Karsh has described Hamas as “real-life monsters” and compared Hamas to Nazis. She has also questioned the Gaza health ministry’s casualty numbers, which have been found to be accurate by the United Nations and even the Israeli military. “When numbers come from a Ministry of Health run by Hamas, whether that’s done deliberately or not, it influences how people perceive the story—and it can even shape policies,” she told eJewishPhilanthropy.

Karsh has also been highly critical of the Palestine solidarity protests and encampments on university campuses and the media coverage of them. In a December 2024 article in Jewish Journal titled “Editorial Bias: Campus Newspapers Must Stop Marginalizing Jews,” she writes: “Student journalism at some of the most elite universities had already become a breeding ground for rhetoric that marginalizes Jewish voices and vilifies Israel.”

Citing Columbia University’s student newspaper, she writes: “The Columbia Spectator has demonstrated systemic editorial bias against Jewish students by downplaying concerns about antisemitism and portraying pro-Israel positions as inherently problematic.” The Columbia Spectator received the Society of Professional Journalists award for “Best All-Around Student Newspaper” in 2024.

Commenting on the same topic in an interview, Karsh later said, “Nobody is writing government policy based on a TikTok video, but you read an investigative piece that’s produced by The New York Times, I’m going to bet you that some congressperson is going to quote that and is going to write policy based on it.

“That’s the problem, [students newspapers are] a feeder to all these mainstream news outlets that they’re carrying that bias with them into these spaces.” She added, “My focus is how Jews are being portrayed in the media, as well as Israel.”

To the best of our searching, Karsh has never publicly expressed any concern or sympathy for the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli military in Gaza, including over 20,000 children, the displacement of 95% of the population, the widening famine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, including homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and universities, among other acts that human rights groups, leading genocide scholars, and the United Nations have found to be a genocide.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous is a journalist and editor at Drop Site News.

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