In the aftermath of a pre-dawn operation to take out the then-leader of ISIS, Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, journalists and wire services descended on the small neighborhood in Atmeh, northern Syrian to report on the aftermath of the raid. News agencies rushed to capture footage of the location of the strike after the attack, and convey the living conditions of the ISIS leader prior to his assassination. Associated Press, was the first to interview the landlord who insisted that his tenant claimed to be a cab driver. Meanwhile, other outlets showed the decimated bodies of children who had died during the operation. One journalist, in her efforts to break a new angle on the story, published rental contracts and confidential documents that implicated neighbors and landlords in the area. All the reports confirmed thirteen civilians, and six children among the casualties of the attack. However, I argue that one casualty that remained unreported was the commitment to journalistic ethics, protecting sources and lives and norms and standards that journalists live by. In fact, publishing of sensitive material put innocent neighbors and bystanders at risk of retaliation by ISIS for perceived collaboration with American forces, as well as at risk of being the targets of other attacks for perceived collaboration with the ISIS leader found in their midst. I argue that this event presents an opportunity to investigate how the continuing global war on terror has produced long-term deleterious effects on journalistic norms. This paper considers the ways in which a battle that has made innocent civilians’ lives expendable has in so doing made the violation of their privacy a non-issue. I argue that the impact of accepting civilian casualties as an acceptable outcome in the quest to extinguish leaders of global terrorist networks, journalism has also made a significant decision in deciding which sources deserve protection, which bystanders deserve privacy, and where journalistic norms may be bent if not entirely broken in pursuit of a story.