PBM profits obscured by mergers and accounting practices, USC Schaeffer white paper shows

Requiring more financial transparency from PBMs would help policymakers understand how money flows through the large healthcare companies that now own them

University of Southern California

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Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) under the microscope for their role in high drug prices have often cited their reportedly slim profit margins as evidence that they do not drive up costs. The three leading PBMs, which control about 80% of the prescription drug market, have historically reported profit margins of 4% to 7%, among the lowest in the healthcare industry.

A new white paper from the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics demonstrates that these slim margins are dramatically influenced by the accounting practices PBMs elect to employ. The paper also shows how efforts to assess PBM profits have become more challenging after these companies merged with healthcare conglomerates that own other players in the pharmaceutical supply chain.

States in recent years have advanced or considered numerous measures seeking to increase PBM transparency, and Congress is currently pursuing legislation to reform PBM practices. The Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile, continues to scrutinize PBMs after accusing leading firms of inflating drug costs through strategies like rebates, markups and preferential treatment of affiliated pharmacies.

“Accounting practices make it difficult to judge the health and efficiency of the PBM market, particularly as dominant firms have become part of larger, more complex companies,” said lead author Karen Mulligan, a research scientist at the Schaeffer Center. “Greater financial disclosure requirements for PBMs are needed to develop a better picture of how PBMs make money and the extent to which these practices may raise costs for consumers.”

How accounting choices drive margins

PBMs sit at the center of the pharmaceutical supply chain, acting as intermediaries that pay pharmacies and negotiate rebates with drug manufacturers on behalf of insurers. PBMs retain transaction fees and a portion of manufacturer rebates while passing along payments between manufacturers, insurers and pharmacies.

Historically, PBMs have included these “pass-through payments” in financial reporting. This may also include the share of rebates sent directly to the insurer. While allowed under professional accounting guidelines, this practice may add hundreds of billions of dollars to PBMs’ reported revenue or expenses without affecting their actual earnings. This obscures key determinants of PBMs’ profitability, including the role of rebates, fees and other payments.

Using a simplified example with typical transaction fees and rebates, the white paper illustrates how accounting choices can produce vastly different profit margins for a hypothetical drug listed at $360. If pass-through payments were reported as revenues or expenses, the PBM’s margin would be 10% – or slightly higher at 13% if manufacturer rebates passed to the insurer were not reported. However, the margin jumps to 87% if pass-through payments were not reported at all. (See Figure 5 in the white paper.)

Vertical integration in the healthcare industry has further blurred PBMs’ financial picture. In the past decade, the three dominant PBMs have become part of diverse healthcare corporations that also own insurers, specialty pharmacies and group purchasing organizations (GOPs) that negotiate discounts.

Under this structure, payments between the PBM, insurer and the specialty pharmacy become internal transfers invisible to the public. Using the same hypothetical $360 drug as the previous example, the white paper shows how the publicly reported profit margin can be half of what’s recorded internally, as dollars are shifted to other units within the PBM’s parent company. (See Figure 6.)

Transparency reforms should illuminate revenue streams

The researchers suggest that policymakers consider requiring PBMs to exclude pass-through payments from financial reporting, as regulators have done for intermediaries in other industries.

Policymakers should also consider reforming financial reporting requirements so that healthcare conglomerates provide separate reporting for each distinct business unit, rather than allowing PBM operations to be combined with other units like specialty pharmacy. Further, requiring disclosure of internal transfers and pass-through payments in these companies would provide clarity about what’s driving profits.

“True transparency requires greater visibility into profit flows hidden inside increasingly complex corporate structures,” said co-author Darius Lakdawalla, chief scientific officer at the Schaeffer Center and the Quintiles Chair of Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation at the USC Mann School. “Building a more efficient and sustainable pharmaceutical supply chain starts with a better understanding of where dollars are flowing.”

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Article Publication Date

22-Jan-2026

COI Statement

This white paper was supported by the Schaeffer Center. A complete list of supporters of the Schaeffer Center can be found in our annual report online.

Missing Medicare data alters hospital penalties, study finds

Hospitals in areas with high Medicare Advantage enrollment face inflated financial penalties for readmissions, because government uses only traditional Medicare data

Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan

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For more than a decade, hospitals have worked to help older adults avoid repeated inpatient stays, incentivized by a federal program that cuts Medicare reimbursements if hospitals have higher-than-expected rates of readmissions for people with certain conditions.

The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program has helped spur innovation, including initiatives to better prepare patients and their families to manage care after hospitalization, and to support them virtually at home.

But a new University of Michigan study finds that these financial penalties have hit some hospitals harder than they should, even if those hospitals have done a reasonable job at keeping people with heart failure, pneumonia and other serious conditions from ending up back in a hospital within a month of leaving one.

Such hospitals have been paying inflated readmission penalties for a seemingly unrelated reason: They happen to serve higher percentages of older adults who have chosen to enroll in Medicare Advantage plans run by private insurance companies.

So what’s the connection?

Currently, the federal government only grades hospitals on their readmission performance for older adults with traditional Medicare, which is run by the federal government. Data from Medicare Advantage are not currently included in the calculations that determine these penalties.

This is a problem, because Medicare Advantage enrollees tend to be healthier than traditional Medicare beneficiaries. But the readmission penalty program’s risk-adjustment is unable to capture these differences.

So, the researchers find, hospital performance looks worse for hospitals treating fewer traditional Medicare beneficiaries and more Medicare Advantage enrollees, even if those hospitals take the same actions to prevent readmissions as other hospitals.

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, suggests that not incorporating Medicare Advantage data results in an unwarranted redistribution of nearly $300 million a year in readmission penalties across hospitals nationwide. That’s more than half the total amount of readmissions penalties incurred each year across all hospitals.

Penalties are publicly reported every year and covered by the news media.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has issued a rule to begin using Medicare Advantage data in the program. But even when it takes effect later this year, it will not affect hospital penalties for several years.

An unintended consequence with major consequences

The analysis shows an unintended consequence of the intersection between two major health policies of the last 15 years: the rapid rise in Medicare plan enrollment, and the HRRP, says senior author Geoffrey Hoffman, Ph.D., a professor at the U-M School of Nursing and member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

“Medicare Advantage has experienced extraordinary growth in the past decade, yet policymakers haven’t caught up with implications of this growth for Medicare payment policy that is based purely on traditional Medicare enrollment,” says Hoffman. “The omission of Medicare Advantage data highlights the continuing issue of inadequate measurement of patient risk in the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, with important implications for the penalties that hospitals face.”

When the HRRP started calculating readmission rates in 2012, only 29% of older adults and people with disabilities chose Medicare Advantage plans.

Today, it’s 54%. But the distribution is not even across the country.

Hoffman and lead author Zoey Chopra, M.A., mapped that distribution and divided more than 3,200 hospitals into five groups based on the MA enrollment levels in 1,486 counties.

Chopra is working toward both a medical degree in the U-M Medical School and a Ph.D. in economics in the U-M College of Literature, Science and the Arts. He is a Medical Scientist Training Program fellow at the Medical School.

Differences in hospitals and populations

The hospitals in the areas with the highest Medicare Advantage enrollment were much more likely to be larger, nonprofit, teaching-oriented and in urban areas than hospitals in the areas with the lowest levels of Medicare Advantage enrollment.

Even when the researchers took into account an aspect of the readmission penalty program that only judges hospitals against groups of their peer hospitals, they still found that the Medicare Advantage enrollment rate mattered.

Past studies have shown that older adults who choose Medicare Advantage plans tend to be in the younger age range of eligibility, and to have fewer serious health conditions.

Hoffman has studied patterns of migration back to traditional Medicare by adults who had previously chosen Medicare Advantage plans, and factors that cause older adults to leave a Medicare Advantage plan for another Medicare Advantage plan or traditional Medicare.

Even though the readmission penalty program adjusts penalties based on the health risks of hospitals’ patients with the conditions that are included in the program, the lack of Medicare Advantage data could be a source of bias, he said.

Areas with more Medicare Advantage enrollees may end up with higher-risk traditional Medicare beneficiaries, because healthier enrollees migrate to Medicare Advantage. But those risk differences can’t be captured in the data models used by CMS. Therefore, by basing the program’s penalties only on traditional Medicare enrollees, hospitals with more Medicare Advantage patients are at greater, unwarranted risk of readmission penalties.

“Our study observes an inadvertent consequence of restricting the readmissions program to traditional Medicare participants,” said Chopra. “At the time of the HRRP’s rollout, this made sense, given lower enrollment and concerns about accuracy of the Medicare Advantage data. However, including Medicare Advantage data now appears imperative to avoid unnecessary penalties for hospitals treating relatively more private pay patients.”

Potential solutions

The new policy taking effect later this year rule will add Medicare Advantage data to HRRP calculations of readmissions, but Hoffman and Chopra have concerns about the completeness of what may be available. Risk-coding and policy differences across Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare could also complicate comparisons of hospital performance.

It will also base penalties on the last two years’ worth of readmission data, instead of three. While the inclusion of Medicare Advantage data nearly doubles the amount of data used for comparisons, given concerns about data completeness and accuracy, this change may nonetheless make it harder statistically to see how hospitals have really done on keeping readmissions as low as possible, Hoffman said.

In addition to the rule, they suggest, CMS could consider factoring the percentage of Medicare Advantage enrollees in a hospital’s area or patient base into the calculations for its readmission rate and potential penalty.

The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (RO1AG074944, T32AG000221). Chopra’s funding is through the Population Studies Center at the U-M Institute for Social Research. Andrew Ryan, Ph.D., of Brown University is a co-author of the study.

Hospital Readmission Reduction Program Penalties for Hospitals with High Medicare Advantage Penetration, JAMA Network Open, DOI:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.54972

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.54972 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Hospital Readmission Reduction Program Penalties for Hospitals with High Medicare Advantage Penetration

Article Publication Date

22-Jan-2026

 

Arctic cloud and ice formation affected by Russian river runoff as region studied for first time

Biological matter in water from Northern Russia is running into Arctic basin, and creating more clouds

University of Birmingham

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image: 

The figure shows the delta of the river Lena, one of the largest rivers in the world. The river is visible in bright yellow, as it splits and divides into many different channels before meandering towards the sea. Sediments carried by the waters flow through a flat plain, creating the Lena River Delta. Hundreds of small lakes and ponds are visible dotted around the tundra.
According to analysis of atmospheric particle number size distributions from the nearby station (Tiksi, Russia), riverine dissolved organic matter input and subsequent new particle formation is a major source of Arctic aerosol which has been largely overlooked.

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Credit: Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA (European Space Agency)

Organic matter carried in rivers to the Russian part of the Arctic Ocean may be creating more clouds and keeping the region cooler, a new study has found.

 

In a new paper published in Communications Earth & Environment, an international team of researchers, including atmospheric specialists from the University of Birmingham, examined an understudied region of the Arctic Circle which includes the Siberian region of Russia, to understand how aerosol formation, which is essential for cloud formation, was influenced by conditions in the region.

 

The researchers investigated the origins of Arctic clouds, finding that organic matter carried from rivers into the Arctic basin, such as rotting leaves, soil, nutrients and living biological material, releases gases that form tiny particles in the air, known as aerosols. These particles act as the essential 'seeds' for cloud formation, allowing water vapour to condense around them and create cloud droplets.

 

Higher levels of aerosols in the air create clouds that are longer lasting and brighter. When the number of cloud droplets is high, the droplets are smaller, lighter, and shinier, making them less efficient at forming rain.

 

The findings from the paper suggest that the Russian region affects the Arctic climate in previously unknown ways. Nine years of data taken from the Tiksi meteorological observatory in Northern Siberia, which sits on the Lena River Delta, was combined with satellite mapping. The research team analysed the resulting data to track the formation of aerosol particles in the air when air masses travelled over water rich in biological matter from river runoff.

 

The team found that aerosol particles affected by this river runoff formed 300% faster, and grew 60% faster in the study. The resulting increase in aerosol particles significantly increased the ability of bright, long-lasting and cooling clouds to form.

 

 

Cold spot for research

 

Biological matter in river runoff increasing the chances of cloud formation in the Arctic Circle is an important discovery for improving climate modelling in the North Pole.

 

The Arctic is heating four times faster than other parts of the world, and climate scientists use models to understand how the Arctic Circle, which is seeing a trend towards less ice formation year on year, will behave as global warming continues.

 

Dr James Brean from the University of Birmingham and first author of the paper said: “Clouds play an important role in regulating Arctic temperature, yet we have cold spots in our knowledge of how they form in large areas of the Arctic. Our new study shows that terrestrial organic matter carried by rivers is a key ingredient for seeding these clouds. By identifying this natural source, we can build more accurate climate models to predict when the Arctic may become ice-free.”

 

Dr Manuel Dall’Osto from the Spanish National Research Centre CSIC, and corresponding author of the paper said: "When rivers flow into the Arctic Ocean, they carry ‘dissolved organic matter’. Once this mix hits the ocean, it helps create tiny new particles in the air called aerosols. These little particles act like seeds, with water vapour holding on to them and then forming clouds. Clouds can either trap heat or reflect sunlight, regulating the Arctic temperature. As the Arctic warms, more rivers flow into the sea, meaning more particles, more clouds, and a potential shifting climate we largely overlooked in these regions. Our study shows how international collaborations are important to understand our changing climate.”

 

Full citation: Brean, J., et al, 2026, Continental river runoff enhances atmospheric aerosol formation over the Arctic Ocean. Communications Earth & Environment, DOI: 10.1038/s43247-025-02986-8

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Journal

Communications Earth & Environment

DOI

10.1038/s43247-025-02986-8 

Article Title

Continental river runoff enhances atmospheric aerosol formation over the Arctic Ocean

Article Publication Date

22-Jan-2026

Scientists Say Clean Energy-Powered Data Centers Could Save Trillions in Climate, Health Costs

“In a future with immense data center growth, ratepayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize Big Tech’s profits at the expense of their own health, climate, and pocketbooks,” said a Union of Concerned Scientists analyst.


Rural Michigan residents rally against a planned $7 billion data center in Saline on December 1, 2025.
(Photo by Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Jan 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As ratepayers and environmentalists continue sounding the alarm over a push to rapidly build data centers to support artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency across the United States, scientists stressed Wednesday that powering such facilities with clean energy could save trillions of dollars in climate and health costs over the coming decades.

“US electricity demand could increase by 60% to 80% between 2025 and 2050, with data centers accounting for more than half of the increase by 2030,” according to the new Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report, Data Center Power Play. “Estimates of the cumulative electricity costs attributable to data centers from 2026 to 2050 range from $886 billion to $978 billion.”





“Without stronger clean energy policies, the additional fossil fuel generation used to power data centers results in an increase in annual US power plant emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) of 19% to 29% (229 to 342 million metric tons—MMT) by 2035,” the document warns. “Restoring federal clean energy tax credits would reduce total US power plant emissions of CO2 by 33% between 2026 and 2035, even if data center demand more than doubles.”

Reviving those tax credits is just one of the “forward-looking policies” for which the report advocates. It also calls for “establishing binding emission reduction targets and carbon-free electricity standards, adopting strong power plant carbon standards, and providing incentives to increase transmission capacity.”

The report further pushes for making large electricity customers, including data centers, cover additional costs and requiring utilities to not only conduct long-term planning for data center load growth but also meet that growth with new low-carbon or zero-carbon generation.

“State and federal policymakers should require data center companies and utilities to negotiate power purchase agreements and grid interconnection terms in public proceedings rather than behind closed doors and nondisclosure agreements,” the publication argues. “Policymakers should also require data center companies and utilities to publicly report power needs, onsite and induced emissions, water use, and other data—and to do so with enough advance notice for communities to make informed decisions.”

In a statement, Mike Jacobs, senior energy analyst at UCS and author of a recent report about costs being pushed onto the public, highlighted that “data centers are already secretly increasing peoples’ electricity bills.”

“While some utility companies and data center developers are intentionally misdirecting scrutiny, others are willfully ignorant about their roles in passing costs onto consumers,” he explained. “In a future with immense data center growth, ratepayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize Big Tech’s profits at the expense of their own health, climate, and pocketbooks. State utility regulators have clear authority to assign costs to those that cause them—it’s time they require data center developers to pay their fair share for energy needs that can dwarf that of entire cities.”

The new report emphasizes that “additional policies to nearly decarbonize the power sector by 2050 would help limit future damages from extreme heat, drought, wildfires, flooding, and other climate impacts. These policies would also deeply cut harmful air pollutants that contribute to respiratory ailments, heart attacks, other illnesses, and mortalities.”



UCS found that “the cumulative global climate benefits from reducing US heat-trapping emissions total $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion between 2026 and 2035, growing to $8 trillion to $13 trillion by 2050. Cumulative health benefits from reducing local air pollution range from $120 billion to $220 billion by 2050.”

The report’s lead author, UCS director of energy research Steve Clemmer, said Wednesday that “the climate and health benefits and net cost savings of building clean energy to meet future electricity needs are obvious and enormous, but they will not materialize without political support and responsible management of data center load growth.”

Julie McNamara, associate policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS, took aim at Big Oil-backed President Donald Trump, whose administration “has repeatedly worked to derail clean energy deployment precisely when we need it most.”

“With surging demand from data centers, the need for plentiful, affordable power has never been higher,” she said. “Yet instead of clearing the path for the fastest, cheapest, cleanest resources to deploy, President Trump is sidelining renewables just to boost the interests of the fossil fuel industry. People will pay the price: in higher bills, in dirtier air, in lost local investments, and in worsened climate impacts.”

We’re All on One Planet; Let’s Act Like It

What recognizing “one planet” really means is showing a wide-open reverence for everything and everybody on it, including everything we don’t understand.



A protester is seen during a climate change demonstration holding a placard that says,” There is no planet B.”
(Photo by Ronen Tivony/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Robert C. Koehler
Jan 23, 2026

Common Dreams

Let’s put Immigration and Customs Enforcement and, indeed, war itself—the smugly violent certainty of militarism—into the largest perspective possible. I suggest this as the only way to maintain my sanity: to believe that we, that our children, actually have a future.

This is one planet. Every living being, every pulse of life, every molecule of existence, is intertwined. I’m not in any way suggesting I understand what this means. I simply see it as our starting point, as we acknowledge and embrace the Anthropocene: the current global era, basically as old as I am, in which natural and human forces are intertwined. The fate of one determines the fate of the other.




‘We Are Running Out of Time’: 2025 Keeps Hot Streak Alive for Global Temperatures

If that’s really true, we have to start thinking beyond the mindset that brought us here. We are truly creating the future by what we do. Our lives are no longer about simply exploiting the present for our limited self-interests or perpetrating us-vs.-them violence on what amounts to ourselves.

I began by mentioning ICE because it’s so blatantly in the news these days, exemplifying the minimalist thinking of US (and global) leaders, as they claim exclusive ownership of bits and pieces of the planet.

The Trump administration is in a weird way proclaiming its belief in “one planet,” but this planet includes only them: basically white, politically obedient Americans.

As Julia Norman writes, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security is in the process of accumulating industrial warehouses around the country “...in an effort to expand the administration’s capacity to execute its mass deportation agenda—a system Secretary Noem recently aptly described as ‘one of the most consequential periods of action and reform in American history.’”

“After the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ allocated an additional $45 billion specifically to ICE for building new immigration detention centers through 2029—a budget 62% larger than the entire federal prison system—DHS gained unprecedented financial capacity to expand its system of terror on a massive scale.”

She adds: “Private contractors such as GEO Group continue to operate facilities housing the vast majority of ICE detainees, positioning themselves to make substantial profit as the administration moves to double detention capacity to 100,000 beds with tens of billions in federal spending. GEO Group and CoreCivic have already reported soaring revenues under Trump’s second term, with executives describing the expansion as ‘pivotal’ and ‘an unprecedented growth opportunity.’ In this system, human confinement has been transformed into an investment strategy.”

There’s an enormous irony here. The Trump administration is in a weird way proclaiming its belief in “one planet,” but this planet includes only them: basically white, politically obedient Americans. What recognizing “one planet” really means is showing a wide-open reverence for everything and everybody on it, including everything we don’t understand.

As I wrote in a column nearly a decade ago, the Anthropocene has come about by a combination of extraordinary technological breakthroughs and cold indifference to their consequences: human evolution, you might say, outside the circle of life. But here we are nonetheless.

The primary causes of the geological shift, according to the Guardian, are the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests, along with such things as plastic pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chickens.

“None of this is good news,” I wrote. “Short-sighted human behavior, from nuclear insanity to agribusiness to the proliferation of plastic trash, has produced utterly unforeseen consequences, including disruption of the stable climate that has nurtured our growth and becoming over the last dozen millennia. This is called recklessness. And mostly the Anthropocene is described with dystopian bleakness: a time of mass extinctions. A time of dying.”

But dystopian bleakness is not the spiritual endpoint here. As Our Planet tells us: “The habitats that make up our planet are connected and reliant upon each other. The astonishing diversity of life on earth depends on these global connections.”

“This is a critical moment for our planet. We have changed it so much we have brought on a new geological age—the Anthropocene. The age of humans. For the first time in our history, the global connections that all living things rely upon are breaking. But if we act quickly, we have the knowledge and the solutions to make our planet thrive again.”

There is, in the collective human soul, a deep love for the planet. I understand how naïve it will sound if I just cry: “C’mon, world! No more war!”So I’ll hold off on that and simply address, well, the media, the antiwar protesters, whoever might be reading this. Yes, we should abolish ICE, defund and think beyond militarism, question the sanctity of the imaginary lines (aka, borders) all across our planet. But we should not do so merely out of fear. Let’s do so, rather, in the deep (dare I say religious?) awareness that humanity and Planet Earth are evolving together. And we’re hovering at a moment of extraordinary change.

Let me know what you think: What should we do next? What are we already doing right?

MURDEROUS ZIONIST CENSORSHIP

Will Bari Weiss Condemn Israel’s Killing of CBS Contributor in Gaza?

Abdul Raouf Shaat is among the more than 200 media workers killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023.


Relatives and colleagues mourn journalists Anas Ghneim, Mohammed Salah Qashta, and Abdul Raouf Shaat, who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on January 21, 2026.
(Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jan 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A cameraman and CBS News contributor was among three journalists killed Wednesday by Israeli forces while working in Gaza, prompting some observers to ask when—or if—Bari Weiss, the network’s pro-Israel editor-in-chief, would condemn the attack.

Anas Ghneim, Mohammed Salah Qashta, and Abdul Raouf Shaat were using a drone to record aid distribution by the Egyptian Relief Committee in al-Zahra in central Gaza when, according to eyewitness accounts, an airstrike targeted one of the group’s vehicles accompanying the journalists.

“The Israeli army criminally targeted this vehicle,” Egyptian Relief Committee spokesperson Mohammed Mansour told AFP.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed its troops “identified several suspects who operated a drone affiliated with Hamas in the central Gaza Strip, in a manner that posed a threat to their safety,” and then “struck the suspects who activated the drone.”

Israeli officials often claim—almost always without conclusive evidence—that journalists, aid workers, and other civilians it kills are Hamas “terrorists.”

CBS News said that Shaat, a 30-year-old newlywed, “worked for years as a cameraman for CBS News and other outlets.”

Among those outlets were Agence France-Presse, which issued a statement condemning the attack and remembering Shaat as a “kind-hearted colleague, with a gentle sense of humor, and as a deeply committed journalist.”

“AFP demands a full and transparent investigation into his death,” the agency said. “Far too many local journalists have been killed in Gaza over the past two years while foreign journalists remain unable to enter the territory freely.”



Shaat’s CBS News colleagues in London remembered him as a “brave journalist” who was “deeply loved by everyone who knew or worked with him.”

However, one prominent CBS figure has so far been conspicuously silent on Shaat’s killing. As of Thursday afternoon, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has said nothing publicly about the incident. Weiss is a self-described Zionist whose outlet Free Press—now a division of CBS following its acquisition by Paramount Skydance—is staunchly pro-Israel and has shown indifference toward Palestinian suffering.


For example, FP called the officially declared Gaza famine, which claimed at least hundreds of lives, a “myth” and published other reporting on Gaza that critics said fueled genocide denial.



Paramount Skydance chairman and CEO David Ellison and his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, are also both reportedly close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Standing in stark contrast with Weiss and CBS News, media advocacy groups were quick to denounce the journalists’ killings. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate blasted what it called a “deliberate assassination” and “a war crime and a crime against humanity under international humanitarian law.”

Condemnation also came from groups including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

“CPJ condemns Israel’s strike on a clearly marked civilian vehicle in central Gaza that killed freelance photojournalists... amid an ongoing ceasefire,” CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said in a statement. “Israel, which possesses advanced technology capable of identifying its targets, has an obligation under international law to protect journalists.”




While it is difficult to know precisely how many journalists have been killed in Gaza—where Israel bans foreign reporters from entering—CPJ says at least 208 Palestinian media workers have been killed there. RSF says the number is at least 220. The United Nations puts the figure at over 260.

The deadliest Israeli massacre of media professionals in Gaza occurred last August 10, when six journalists were killed in a tent bombing outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Later that month, an Israeli “double-tap” strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis killed at least 21 people, including five journalists.

According to Gaza officials, Israeli forces have committed more than 1,200 violations of the ceasefire with Hamas since it took effect last October, killing over 460 Palestinians including upward of 100 children. Officials said at least 11 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza late Wednesday and into Thursday, including the three journalists, three children, and a woman.

Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Israel’s US-backed genocidal war on Gaza has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, and around 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.

Israel also continues to restrict the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, causing preventable deaths. For example, at least 10 children and infants have died of cold-related causes this winter, according to local officials.