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srael has been deliberately targeting journalists as part of its attempt to distort the truth, cover up its crimes and deny the genocidal nature of its war against the Palestinian people. As of writing, Israel has killed 89 journalists in three months. That is a staggering number when we compare it with journalists killed in other major wars. For example, only 67 journalists were killed during the six years of World War II (1939-1945) and only 63 were killed in the Vietnam war which lasted 20 years (1955-1975).
Not only do Israelis kill journalists who are trying to cover the war on the ground in Gaza, it also targets journalists affiliated with Western news outlets where Zionist influence prevails if they show the slightest objectivity or independence in covering the actions of the Israeli occupation power against the Palestinian people. Reporters who deviate from the blind pro-Israeli bias of such news organisations as the New York Times, the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times or their European counterparts do so at risk to their careers. Abdallah Fayyad, a finalist for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 2022 and former editorial board member at the Boston Globe, deplored the “culture of fear” that infests editorial boards and newsrooms because of the tight control over what can and cannot be published on the Israeli war against the Palestinians.
The Los Angeles Times has banned 38 of its journalists from covering the war after they joined hundreds of others from different news organisations in signing an open letter, in November, condemning Israel’s killing of reporters in Gaza and criticising the Western media’s coverage of the war. Jazmine Hughes, a New York Times staff writer, was forced to resign for violating the newsroom policy on the coverage of Gaza. MSNBC cancelled Mahdi Hassan’s programme after a segment exposing the lies of Israeli propaganda. In Europe, BBC has taken six Arab reporters off the air and launched an investigation into their conduct for social media posts expressing pro-Palestinian sympathies or criticising Israel. Germany’s Axel Springer media giant summarily fired the 20-year-old apprentice Kasem Raad for having questioned the network’s staunchly pro-Israeli editorial policy.
So much for the West’s vaunted press freedoms.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 4 January, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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