Gaza and death of Western journalism
On Wednesday, the Israeli army killed two more Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Ismail alGhoul and Rami al-Rifi were working when they were struck by Israeli forces in Gaza city. Al-Ghoul, whose Al Jazeera reports were popular among Arab audiences, was wearing a press vest at the time he was killed.
The latest killings bring Israel’s world-record journalist kill total to at least 113 during the current genocide in Gaza, according to the more conservative estimate. No other world conflict has killed as many journalists in recent memory.
Israel has a long history of violently targeting journalists, so their Gaza kill total is not necessarily surprising. In fact, a 2023 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report documented a “decades-long pattern” of Israel targeting and killing Palestinian journalists. For example, a Human Rights Watch investigation found that Israel targeted “journalists and media facilities” on four separate occasions in 2012. During the attacks, two journalists were killed, and many others were injured.
In 2019, a United Nations commission found that Israel “intentionally shot” a pair of Palestinian journalists in 2018, killing both. More recently, in 2022, Israel shot and killed Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank. Israel attempted to deny responsibility, as it almost always does after it carries out an atrocity, but video evidence was overwhelming, and Israel was forced to admit guilt.
There have been no consequences for the soldier who fired at Abu Akleh, who had been wearing a press vest and a press helmet, or for the Israelis involved in the other incidents targeting journalists.
CPJ has suggested that Israeli security forces enjoy “almost blanket immunity” in incidents of attacks on journalists. Given this broader context, Israel’s targeting of journalists during the current genocide is genuinely not surprising, or out of the ordinary.
However, what is truly surprising, and even shocking, is the relative silence of Western journalists. While there has certainly been some reportage and sympathy in North America and Europe, particularly from watchdog organisations like the CPJ, there is little sense of journalistic solidarity, and certainly nothing approaching widespread outrage and uproar about the threat Israel’s actions pose to press freedoms.
Can we imagine for a moment what the Western journalistic reaction might be if Russian forces killed more than 100 journalists in Ukraine in under a year? Even when Western news outlets have reported on Palestinian journalists killed since the start of the current war, coverage has tended to give Israel the benefit of the doubt, often framing the killings as unintentional casualties of modern warfare.
Also, Western journalism’s overwhelming reliance on pro-Israel sources has ensured the avoidance of colourful adjectives and condemnations. Moreover, overreliance on pro-Israel sources has sometimes made it difficult to determine which party to the conflict was responsible for specific killings. One might assume here that Western news outlets have simply been maintaining their devotion to stated Western reporting principles of detachment and neutrality.
But, in other situations, Western journalists have shown that they are indeed capable of making quite a fuss, and also of demonstrating solidarity. The 2015 killing of 12 Charlie Hebdo journalists provides a useful case in point. Following that attack, a genuine media spectacle ensued, with seemingly the entire institution of Western journalism united to focus on the event.
Thousands of reports were generated within weeks, a solidarity hashtag (“Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie”) went viral, and statements and sentiments of solidarity poured in from Western journalists, news outlets and organisations dedicated to principles of free speech. For example, America’s Society of Professional Journalists called the attack on Charlie Hebdo “barbaric” and an “attempt to stifle press freedom”.
Freedom House issued a similarly harsh commendation, calling the attack “horrific,” and noting that it constituted a “direct threat to the right of freedom of expression”. PEN America and the British National Secular Society presented awards to Charlie Hebdo and the Guardian Media Group donated a massive sum to the publication. The relative silence and calm of Western journalists over the killing of at least 100 Palestinian journalists in Gaza is especially shocking when one considers the larger context of Israel’s war on journalism, which threatens all journalists.
In October, around the time the current war began, Israel told Western news agencies that it would not guarantee the safety of journalists entering Gaza. Ever since, Israel has maintained a ban on international journalists, even working to prevent them from entering Gaza during a brief November 2023 pause in fighting. More importantly, perhaps, Israel has used its sway in the West to direct and control Western news narratives about the war.
Western news outlets have often obediently complied with Israeli manipulation tactics. For example, as global outrage was mounting against Israel in December 2023, Israel put out false reports of mass, systematic rape against Israeli women by Palestinian fighters on October 7. Western news outlets, including the New York Times, were suckered in. They downplayed the growing outrage against Israel and began prominently highlighting the “systematic rape” story. Later, in January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures against Israel.
Israel responded almost immediately by issuing absurd terrorism accusations against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Western news outlets downplayed the provisional measures story, which was highly critical of Israel, and spotlighted the allegations against UNRWA, which painted Palestinians in a negative light. These and other examples of Israeli manipulation of Western news narratives are part of a broader pattern of influence that predates the current war.
One empirical study found that Israel routinely times attacks, especially those likely to kill Palestinian civilians, in ways that ensure they will be ignored or downplayed by US news media. During the current genocide, Western news organisations have also tended to ignore the broad pattern of censorship of pro-Palestine content on social media, a fact which should concern anyone interested in freedom of expression. It’s easy to point to a handful of Western news reports and investigations which have been critical of some Israeli actions during the current genocide.
But these reports have been lost in a sea of acquiescence to Israeli narratives and overall pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian framing. Several studies, including analyses by the Centre for Media Monitoring and the Intercept, demonstrated overwhelming evidence of pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian framing in Western news reportage of the current war. Many journalists in the United States and Europe position themselves as truthtellers, critical of power, and watchdogs.
While they acknowledge mistakes in reporting, journalists often see themselves and their news organisations as appropriately striving for fairness, accuracy, comprehensiveness, balance, neutrality and detachment. But this is the great myth of Western journalism. A large body of scholarly literature suggests that Western news outlets do not come close to living up to their stated principles.
But Israel’s war on Gaza has further exposed news outlets as fraudulent. With few exceptions, news outlets in North America and Europe have abandoned their stated principles and failed to support Palestinian colleagues being targeted and killed en masse.
Amid such spectacular failure and the extensive research indicating that Western news outlets fall well short of their ideals, we must ask whether it is useful to continue to maintain the myth of the Western journalistic ideal. Is Western journalism, as envisioned, dead?