Editor resigns over Israel coverage restrictions, cites ‘conscience’ in Tucker interview

(LifeSiteNews) — Stephen Herreid, political editor of CatholicVote’s Zeale News, resigned August 10 after the outlet imposed a new policy that sharply restricted reporting on Israel — including Israeli settler terrorist attacks against Palestinian Catholics and other Christians in the West Bank. Days later, he sat down with Tucker Carlson to explain why the new policy violated his conscience compelling him to walk away.

In the interview released August 19, Herreid said Zeale had, until recently, published more coverage than almost any other Catholic outlet on “the mistreatment of Palestinians by Israeli forces and by the Israeli settler movement.”

A principal source for this coverage was the Vulnerable People Project (VPP), a U.S.-based Catholic apostolate — led by LifeSite friend and human rights advocate Jason Jones — whose work has been noted by Vatican News and which supplied exclusive comments from residents of Taybeh, the last all-Christian town in the West Bank.

That changed immediately after the July Napa Institute Conference in California, where executives, including CEO Kelsey Reinhardt, met with donors and with Brian Burch, the former CatholicVote (CV) president now serving as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.

Herreid said the new policy was presented to him as a “takeaway” from those meetings and included a directive to drastically reduce Israel coverage, in one formulation a total prohibition until the midterm elections are completed, with any exceptions requiring extra scrutiny from Reinhardt personally.

Furthermore, he was fully disallowed to include any more citations from his main source, VPP, which had been a “gold mine” for exclusive contacts with Christians on the ground, including Fr. Bashar Fawadleh, the Catholic parish priest in Taybeh.

“I immediately went to my immediate supervisor and said, ‘I think this violates my conscience,’” Herreid told Carlson. He judged the involvement of the ambassador to be “inherently scandalous” given the firm public stance of Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Church at large.

“I will not be complicit in such a scandal,” he said. “And I don’t appreciate being put in the position of sitting on (these important stories).”

CV disputes claims, Herreid responds

The day after the interview, CatholicVote released a statement disputing Herreid’s account. Reinhardt said no donor pressured the outlet, that Burch did not “ask, suggest, or insinuate that Zeale should change its editorial coverage,” and simply that added oversight of Herreid reflected concerns about balance, tone, and an over-concentration on one issue. She described the dispute as one of ordinary editorial standards rather than a blackout.

Herreid, however, in a subsequent Substack essay released August 21, presented direct quotes of Reinhardt explaining to him how Burch had advised, “if you’re gonna do Israel, you have to do a side-by-side – you have to have comments from the IDF as well as comments from, uh, from the people on the ground because it’s very hard to verify the stuff that happens.”

The CV CEO also reportedly told the editor that Burch said “I think the only way you could do this is if you lean into a side-by-side. Otherwise, I would ignore it.”

Additionally, Herreid reported that Zeale executive Jerry Hall, who was present at the meeting with Burch, told him the ambassador had suggested the outlet “not take a strong stance … one way or another” with regard to coverage about Israel.

Further presenting his case, Herried maintained that the timing, the sourcing restrictions, and the first Taybeh story published by Zeale after his resignation also undermines Reinhardt’s statement.

Hours after he resigned, Zeale published a report on Israel’s declaration of Taybeh as a closed military zone. Unlike earlier pieces Herreid had overseen, the new article cited no local Christian voices. Those earlier stories featured exclusive quotes from residents that echoed Catholic and Orthodox bishops in the region who said Israeli forces facilitated or ignored Israeli settler terrorist attacks. The new article instead led with an official Israeli military statement claiming the measure was actually meant to protect Christians from settlers.

The Christian residents later told Herreid that, quite contrary to these public statements made by the Israeli military, they felt more threatened, that their movement was restricted while armed Jewish settler terrorists were still permitted to enter their town, and that nearby Bedouin communities continued to face attacks. “The military zone is not working,” he said. “More importantly, the residents don’t even believe it was intended to.”

‘There’s a devil,’ even the ‘best of us’ can capitulate to ‘outpouring of power’ dividing American and Holy Land Christians

Despite this difficult experience, Herried rejects any sort of hunt for villains among his former colleagues for whom he has publicly confirmed both love and admiration.

Reporting his conversations with executives before he resigned, Herreid conveyed to them, “I believe that you are fundamentally in agreement with me on this. I view you not as some bad guy trying to impose something on me, but as a good person who’s been manipulated.”

In responding to a question from Carlson regarding how this could happen, Herreid said, “because there’s a devil,” and not because he had identified any “bad guys” affirming it is “not as simple as that.”

What surprised him most, he said, was the high character of the people involved. “This is all especially alarming because of how good everyone involved is.”

“There is just an outpouring of power in the direction of keeping American Christians from looking at their own Church where it suffers and their own Lord and being intimate with the people in the Holy Land,” he lamented.

“It’s so powerful that even the best of us,” including the high-quality leadership and staff at CatholicVote, which has done some of the best work on coverage of this issue, “and even they, someone even got to them,” Herreid reflected.

“This is so bad that even the best people who are advocating ostensibly for the interests of our faith and of Our Lord and of the Body of Christ are feeling enough pressure that they’re going to their editor” and seeking to silence coverage on Israel’s ongoing aggressions against Palestinians, he said.

‘Not an option for Christians’ to abandon co-religionists ‘under attack’

Appealing to viewers on behalf of Catholics and other Christians in the Middle East, the former editor said, “right now, the Church in the Holy Land is suffering. And I want Catholics in America to be intimate with Christ, to be close to Christ, to look to Christ and not lose sight of Christ on the cross and not lose sight of the body of Christ where it’s suffering, especially.”

He continued encouraging Catholics to not “allow whatever the interests might be” to disrupt or compromise their bond and commitment with their brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering.

“That’s just not an option for us as Christians,” Herreid said. “We have to be focusing on being in solidarity, especially with our co-religionists when they’re under attack.”

“What could be more important than that?” he asked.