Rick Moran reported on May 10 that the Newseum in Washington was about to induct two Hamas "newsmen" onto their memorial engraved glass panels.  Now there seems to be some second (one could argue first) thoughts about doing that.

Clifford May at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies wrote a piece on May 16 -- an update on this attempt to induct Mahmoud al-Kumi and Hussam Salama into the Newseum as "reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died reporting the news," near the names of Daniel Pearl and others on the Newseum's glass panels.  Here is what he has, in part:

They were terrorists because the United States government says they were terrorists. Both men were employees of Al-Aqsa Television, designated a terrorist entity in 2010 by President Obama's Treasury Department. Al-Aqsa is an arm of Hamas...

I first heard about the Newseum's plans late last Thursday night when a reporter e-mailed me. He knew that the national-security-policy institute I head, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, holds its annual Washington Forums at the Newseum. As someone who spent most of his adult life as a reporter and editor (for the New York Times and other publications), I have a fondness for the venue. I was asked if FDD would be changing its plans for 2013.

It would, of course, be inappropriate for a think tank that opposes terrorism to hold an event at an institution that honors terrorists. But I said I would call the Newseum's CEO, James C. Duff, first thing in the morning, in the hope that there had been some misunderstanding[.] ...

On Monday morning, just minutes before its ceremony honoring a list of "fallen journalists," the Newseum released an "update" saying that "serious questions" had been raised and, in response, it had "decided to re-evaluate the inclusion" of Mahmoud Al-Kumi and Hussam Salama "as journalists on our memorial wall pending further investigation."

The keynote speaker at the ceremony was Richard Engel, NBC's intrepid chief foreign correspondent who was held hostage in Syria for five days last December. Briefly addressing the controversy, Engel said, "just because you carry a camera and a notebook doesn't make you a journalist[.]

Now that the Newseum itself has become the subject of a news story within its own walls, let's see how well the people there research the facts before they author the central theme of any upcoming articles.