#committee to protect journalists

[odinsblog]

“I first started noticing the journalists dying on Instagram. I'm a journalist, I'm Arab, and I've reported on war. A big part of my community is other Arab journalists who do the same thing.

And when someone dies, news travels fast. Recently, I pulled up the list that the Committee to Protect Journalists has been keeping and looked at it for the first time. There are 95 journalists and media workers on it as of today.

Almost everyone on it is Palestinian. Scrolling through, I started to get angry. These were the people carrying the burden of documenting this whole war.

Israel is not allowing foreign journalists into Gaza, except on rare occasions with military escorts. These people's names are being buried in a giant list that keeps growing. What I want to do is lift some of them off the list for a moment and give you a glimpse of who they were and the work they made.

I'll start with Sadi Mansour. Sadi was the director of Al-Quds News Network, and he posted a 22-second video on November 18. That was a report from the war, but it also gave me a picture into his marriage.

Sadi's wearing his press vest and looks exhausted. He's explaining that cell service and the Internet keep getting cut off, and it's often impossible to text or call anyone, including his wife. So they've resorted to using handwritten letters to communicate while he's out reporting, sending them back and forth with neighbors or colleagues.

He ends the video with a picture of one of these letters from his wife. In it, she writes,

‘Me and the kids stayed up waiting for you until the morning, and you didn't come home. We were really sad.

I kept telling the kids, Look, he's coming. But you didn't show up. May God forgive you.

Come home tomorrow and eat with us. Do you want me to make you kebab or maybe kapse? Bring your friends with you, it's okay.

And give Azeez the battery to charge. What do you think about me sending you handwritten letters with messenger pigeons from now on? Ha ha ha.

I'm just kidding. I want to curse at you, but we're living in a war. Too bad.

Okay, I love you. Bye.��

A few hours after he shared that letter, Sadie and his co-worker Hassouna Saleem were at Sadie's home, when they were killed by an Israeli air strike that hit his house.

His wife and kids, who weren't there, survived.

Gaza is tiny, and the journalist community is really close. Reading the list, you can see all the connections between people. Like with Brahim Lafi.

Brahim was a photojournalist, one of the first journalists to die. He was killed while reporting on October 7. He was just 21, still new to journalism.

On his Instagram, you can see that in his posts just a few years ago, he was still practicing his photography, taking pictures of coffee cups and flowers. Then he started doing beautiful portraits and action shots. You can really feel him starting to become a journalist.

Clicking around on Instagram, I found a tribute post about Brahim from his co-worker Rushdie Sarraj. In this photo, Brahim staring intently at the back of a camera, his face lit up by the light from the viewfinder. He looks so young.

The caption reads, My assistant is gone. Brahim is gone. Rushdie himself was a beloved journalist and filmmaker.

And I know that because he's also on the list. He was killed just two weeks after Brahim. I read the tribute post to him too.

I saw this over and over again. Journalists posting tributes, who were then killed themselves soon after. And a tribute goes up for them.

And then the pattern continues.

Thank you.

Something else I saw over and over on the list, journalists later in the war who had become aware that they could be making their last reports. They'd say it at the beginning of their videos. And those were the hardest to watch, especially when it was true.

One video like that was posted by Ayat Hadduro. Ayat was a freelance journalist and video blogger. Her videos before the war covered a wide range from what I can tell, interviews about women in politics.

She even appeared in a commercial for ketchup-flavored chips. She clearly liked being in front of the camera. Once the war started, Ayat's pivoted to covering bombings and food shortages.

On November 20, she posted a video report from her home. You can hear the airstrikes hitting very close to where she is. It's scary.

‘This is likely my last video. Today, the occupation forces dropped phosphorus bombs on Beit Lahya area and frightening sound bombs. They dropped letters from the sky, ordering everyone to evacuate.

Everyone ran into the streets in the craziest way. No one knows where to go.

But everyone else has evacuated. They don't know where they're going. The situation is so scary.

What's happening is so tough, and may God have mercy on us.’

She was killed later that day.

Targeting journalists, in case you didn't know, is a war crime. So far, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found that three of the journalists on the list were explicitly targeted by the IDF, the Israeli military. Investigations by the Washington Post and Reuters, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have also raised serious questions in these three cases.

And the Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating 10 other killings. When we reached out to the IDF for comments, they said, quote, the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists. That's the answer they always give in these situations.

Meanwhile, dozens of seasoned reporters have fled Gaza. Journalists who worked for Al Jazeera, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, Agence France-Presse. So many media offices were demolished in Israeli airstrikes that the Committee to Protect Journalists stopped counting.

It's not just individual lives that have been destroyed. It's an entire infrastructure.

Thank you.

The name on the list that was hardest for me to look at was Issam Abdullah, because I'd crossed paths with him once. Issam was a Lebanese journalist, a video journalist for Reuters for many, many years. He had just won an award for coverage of Ukraine.

I'm Lebanese and still report there sometimes, and I'd worked with Issam a couple of summers ago. He helped me film a sort of random story in Beirut. I was interviewing this entrepreneur who had started a sperm freezing company after an accident where he spilled a tray of hot coffee on his private area, burning himself.

I know, ridiculous. It was a really silly shoot. Right after we said cut and started to rap, Issam started this whole bit about being in his late 30s, reconsidering his own sperm quality and everything he now realized he was doing to hurt it, and no one could stop laughing.

It was a really good day that felt good to remember and to remember him that way. Issam was killed by the IDF on October 13. His death was one of the three that the Committee to Protect Journalists has identified as a targeted killing.

He was fired upon by an Israeli tank while standing in an empty field on the Lebanon-Israel border with a small group of other journalists. Everyone was wearing press vests with cameras out. They were covering the Hezbollah part of this war.

A few other journalists were injured in the attack, which was captured on video. The IDF says they were responding to firing from Hezbollah, not targeting the journalists. But multiple investigations, including by Reuters, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the AFP, found no evidence of any firing from the location of the journalists before the IDF shot at them.

The journalists in the group and video footage confirmed that there was no military activity near them. I had only met Issam once, barely knew him, but it affected me so much when he died. I know that he understood the risks of his job, but somehow it still felt so random and unfair that he would be struck down like that, following the rules, wearing his press vest and helmet, and a pack of reporters on a sunny day in an open field.

I find myself thinking about him all the time. His last Instagram post was commemorating another journalist, this iconic reporter Shereen Abou Aql who had been killed by the IDF. When I first saw that post in October, I thought how ironic because a week later, Isam also was killed by the IDF.

But then, after spending time reading the list, I realized how common this had become. I still haven't finished going through the list and looking up the people on it. I keep finding things that stick with me, like the funny way this one radio host would cut off a caller who was rambling on for too long.

A tweet from reporter Al-Abdallah that quoted Sylvia Plath. It read, What ceremony of wars can patch the havoc? I'm going to keep going down the list, even though this story is over now.

Just for myself. My own way of bearing witness. Which is, in the end, all that these journalists were trying to do.”

—DANA BALLOUT, The 95. Dana sifts through a very long list—the list of journalists killed in the Israel-Hamas war, and comes back with five small fragments of the lives of the people on it. Dana is a Lebanese-American, Emmy-nominated documentary producer.

[vyorei]

Journalists are at severe risk bringing us information through literal bombs falling, take a moment to read this article and think about these people

Full article here:

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Lahav Harkov

One-third of the Palestinian journalists listed by the Committee to Protect Journalists as being killed in the war in Gaza were employed by terrorist groups, Jewish Insider has learned.

The high number of journalists reported by NGOs killed in Gaza has made headlines in the Washington Post, The New York Times and elsewhere, without any mention of their affiliations with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Out of 100 Palestinian journalists on the list on May 17, 33 worked for “Hamas-affiliated” media, such as Al-Aqsa Voice Radio, Al-Quds Al-Youm, Quds News Network and others. Another two worked for Palestinian Islamic Jihad outlets Kan’an and Mithaq Media Foundation. 

Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV was named a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2010; the outlet employed 13 of those listed by CPJ.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) claims that 105 journalists were killed in Gaza, but only lists 23 of them. Several worked for terrorist organizations’ media outlets, but those affiliations are not listed on the RSF website.

These include Hassouna Salim, the director of the Hamas propaganda arm Quds News; Mohamed Khalifeh, director at Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV; Abdallah Iyad Breis, the lead photographer for the Hamas Education Ministry’s TV channel; and others.

RSF reported that Yasser Mamdouh El-Fady was killed while “reporting on the presence of Israeli tanks near the Al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.” It does not mention that he worked for Islamic Jihad through its Kan’an news agency, which CPJ reported on its list.

CPJ says Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi was shot and killed at the Erez crossing, while RSF said that he was “one of the first reporters to venture out in Gaza on the morning of 7 October.” Other Gazan news photographers who documented Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians have been accused of having foreknowledge of the attack.

Both organizations say that they only included journalists “killed in connection with their work or where there is still some doubt that their death was work-related,” according to CPJ. RSF also noted in a statement to JI that they list journalists “killed in the line of duty or for reasons related to work.”

[nando161mando]

The Committee to Protect Journalists has issued an alert concerning the safety of Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif in Gaza following Israeli threats.

Last week, Israel assassinated Anas’s colleague Ismail Al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi in a targeted drone attack in Gaza.

[incognitajones]

Mexico has for several years been one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. Since the year 2000, 163 journalists have been murdered and another 32 have gone missing, according to British human rights organization Article 19. In 99% of cases, the murders of journalists remain unsolved.

Mexico is the Western Hemisphere’s most dangerous country for journalists, according to extensive documentation by CPJ since 1992. Since the turn of the century, at least 141 journalists and other media workers have been killed... Impunity is the norm in crimes against the press. Mexico is the country with the highest number of disappeared journalists in the world, yet not one case of a disappeared journalist in Mexico has ever led to a conviction.

[drsonnet]

Israel killed yet another Palestinian journalist - now 36.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists “The Israel-Gaza war has become the deadliest period for journalists covering conflict since CPJ began documenting journalist fatalities in 1992.”

[readingsquotes]

More than three quarters of the 99 journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2023 died in the Israel-Gaza war, the majority of them Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza. The conflict claimed the lives of more journalists in three months than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year. .... The 2023 global total – the highest since 2015 and an almost 44% increase on 2022’s figures – includes a record number of journalist killings – 78 �� that CPJ research determined were work-related, with eight more still under investigation. Thirteen media workers also were killed last year.  ... Almost all of the journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war were Palestinian, and CPJ has raised concerns about the deliberate targeting of members of the media by the Israeli military. 

Israel-Gaza war brings 2023 journalist killings to devastating high

By Kathy Jones

[trendynewsnow]

The Perilous Life of Journalists in Gaza Amidst Conflict

The Perilous Life of Journalists in Gaza Hossam Shabat, a journalist based in northern Gaza, recently described his existence as feeling hunted. This chilling sentiment arose just days after the Israeli military made grave accusations against him and five other Al Jazeera journalists, alleging that they were affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These claims, which the network has…

[noctomania]

Even before the outbreak of the current war, CPJ’s “Deadly Pattern” report in May 2023 documented 20 journalists killed by Israeli fire over two decades without anyone held accountable, such as Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist killed in the West Bank in 2022. In that report, CPJ also noted several cases in which journalists killed were accused of being terrorists without any credible evidence produced.

In case you missed it, this has been the deadliest "war" for journalists ever

In Salman al-Bashir's words as he tore his press vest off in the middle of his broadcast:

"We are victims, live on air," he cried. "It is only a matter of time until we are killed. We wait our turn, one after the other."

Protecting the word is important. Protect the people who carry the word is of much higher priority. This is a genocide. Free Palestine. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free.

[marktaylor-canfield]

Violent Arrest Of Photojournalist Outrages Press Freedom Advocates: Aust...

[vyorei]

Another journalist has been murdered.

Yazan Al-Zuweidi. Say his name.

[good-old-gossip]

Israeli war on Gaza has killed more journalists over the past year than any other conflict over the past three decades, according to data by CPJ

According to the CPJ, a US-based group monitoring human rights violations against journalists worldwide, at least 128 media workers were killed in the conflict between 7 October 2023 and 4 October 2024.

The organisation is also investigating a further 130 cases of suspected killings, detentions or injuries. The group said it's the deadliest period for journalists since it began its documentation activities in 1992.

The data is conservative compared to the number of journalists reported killed by the Palestinian health ministry, which has estimated that at least 175 were killed between 7 October 2023 and 6 October 2024.

The CPJ said that journalists over the past 12 months have worked under the same dire humanitarian conditions as all civilians in Gaza, including the devastating bombardment of the densely populated enclave that destroyed most of its buildings, the Israeli siege that led to famine, and the constant displacement of the population.

"Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price - their lives - for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth," said the CPJ's Carlos Martinez de la Serna.

The targeting of journalists during conflicts is a crime under international law. Israel is currently standing trial before the International Court of Justice for its alleged violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention, in a case filed by South Africa in December.

South Africa's application cited the targeting of Palestinian journalists as part of its evidence.

"In the two months since 7 October 2023, the number of journalists killed already exceeded that of the entirety of World War II," it said in the application.

Israel denies that it deliberately targets journalists.

✍️: Sondos Asem/MEE

[coochiequeens]

Journalism can be a deadly job to begin with.

By Britt Gronemeyer

Since the eruption of mass anti-government protests in mid-September 2022, the Islamic Republic has waged a war on women journalists in Iran. The targeting of journalists is not new. However, security forces have deliberately gone after women journalists and jailed them at a rapidly increasing rate. While the international community has spoken out in support of the Women, Life, Freedom revolution, they have done little to protect the women journalists at the heart of this movement. 

In September 2022, Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi were imprisoned on alleged charges of espionage. They had attempted to report on the death of twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini—a Kurdish-Iranian woman who had been killed by the so-called morality police for “violating” mandatory hijab. Hamedi wrote for the reformist newspaper Shargh and was the first journalist to report on the death of Amini, doing so from the hospital in Tehran where Amini had been on life support. Mohammadi had reported on the protests at Amini’s funeral in her hometown of Saqez in northwest Kurdistan province.

In January of this year, journalist Nazila Maroufian revealed that she had been jailed and sentenced to two years on alleged charges of “anti-government propaganda and spreading false news” after publishing an interview with Amini’s father, Amjad Amini.

These three women and their experiences do not exist in a vacuum. The targeting of female journalists has been a direct response to the rise of the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. More than seventy journalists have been imprisoned in Iran since the beginning of the protests, 44 percent of whom are women. This is an unprecedented number in Iranian history.

According to journalist and activist Yeganeh Rezaian, a senior researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Women, Life, Freedom uprising would not exist without female journalists.

“The Women, Life, Freedom movement was started by the unfortunate death of a woman, but also by women’s coverage of that terrible incident. So, if it was not for those first two female journalists who covered the death of Mahsa Amini, there would be no clarity about what had happened to her,” Rezaian explained to me.

What the constitution says

This phenomenon is not limited to Iranian journalists covering the ongoing protests. The Islamic Republic has a long history of jailing journalists as well as subjecting them to extreme censorship and political pressure. 

Under the Islamic Republic, the legal framework for freedom of the press is constituted by a combination of sharia law and Islamic cultural norms. While there are provisions within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran developed in 1979 that protect freedom of expression and address the freedom of the press, these provisions are often overlooked or subjected to severe restrictions.

Article 24 of the Constitution establishes the rights of the press to freedom of expression, yet they are subject to exceptions in favor of the principles of Islam and the rights of the public. Article 168 of the Constitution reinforces the restrictions on the freedom of expression by laying out the procedures relating to offenses by the press. The 1986 Iranian Press Law established the Mission of the Press, the Rights of the Press, and the Limits of the Press. The provision regarding the limitations placed upon the press would prove to be the most significant in justifying contemporary restrictions of the press.   

By adopting rhetoric pointing to national security concerns and the spread of propaganda, the Islamic Republic has abused its jurisdiction over national security. The Iranian state uses national security charges as an increasingly transparent façade for the wrongful detention of journalists in an effort to eliminate criticism of the regime and prevent the exposure of other human rights violations they have committed.

Waging war on women journalists

Rezaian claimed that the current targeting of female journalists is not shocking. She has commented that these efforts have become so prolific that they no longer attempt to hide the detention of journalists, noting that they are shameless in raiding these women’s homes without warrants and providing purpose for their imprisonment.

CPJ has declared the Islamic Republic the worst jailer of journalists in the world for 2022. The sheer number of detentions is worsened by the conditions in which these women journalists are being treated. Journalists in Iran are subjected to poor prison conditions, including being frequently kept in solitary confinement. Furthermore, female journalists are specifically targeted as victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. 

So, while the international community says that they stand with the women of Iran, they must step up in the face of a war against female journalists and ensure that they are given the freedom to continue to fight for the rights of their peers. 

Freedom of the press in the international community is addressed through numerous bodies of international law. UNESCO declares that access to information is a fundamental freedom as well as an integral component of freedom of expression. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Islamic Republic of Iran has ratified, holds that everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression. This includes the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.” The blatant dismissal of these rights by the Islamic Republic must be recognized and condemned by the international community. 

There are other ways to hold the Islamic Republic accountable, including the use of targeted financial sanctions and travel bans against companies and individuals that are responsible for the unjust treatment of journalists. Additionally, European Union states could summon their ambassadors back to their countries in protest of the wrongful detentions and the harsh treatment of female journalists. Lastly, countries with universal jurisdiction laws can and should investigate the detentions of women journalists to bring the individuals responsible to justice.  

As women journalists risk their lives to share the realities of the Islamic Republic’s brutality with the world, the international community must support them with deliberate action.  

Britt Gronemeyer is a Young Global Professional at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs.

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Israel is conducting massacres and mass arrests as it decimates northern Gaza. With journalists and social media activists increasingly targeted and detained, less and less footage is getting out of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign. ⁣

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Israel has killed at least 175 journalists since the start of its genocide. Now, it has labeled six Al Jazeera journalists as “terrorists,” which the network denied, calling Israel’s claims “fabricated accusations as a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region.” ⁣

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The Committee to Protect Journalists said on X, “Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence.” ⁣

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As it silences journalists, Israel has leveled over 10 residential buildings in Jabalia and stormed the north’s only remaining hospital, threatening the lives of about 200 patients trapped inside and conducting mass arrests. ⁣

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One of the journalists targeted by Israel, Anas al-Sharif, wrote, “North Gaza is being wiped out.” ⁣

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Journalist Bisan Owda reacted to the attacks in Jabalia, saying: “No civil defense to grab the people from under the rubble. Nothing. Even journalists. No one to cover this massacre ... the world is complicit in this, is silent on this.” ⁣

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#Gaza #Jabalia #BeitLahia #Palestine #Palestinian #JournalismIsNotACrime #Journalist #Israel #Hospital