Walking A Tightrope: Journalists Face Tough Choices In Gaza

On October 26, images of a grieving journalist, Wael Al Dahdouh, along with the bodies of his slain family members went viral across the world. Dahdouh, who is the Bureau Chief for Gaza at Al Jazeera news network, has been covering the crisis in Gaza and the West Bank for many years and was in Gaza when the Israeli counterattack began following the October 7 Hamas attack. Despite the death of his family including his wife, son, daughter and grandson in an Israeli airstrike on the Nuisserat refugee camp in Gaza on October 25, the journalist has kept up his work and reported daily from the besieged Palestinian enclave.

At least 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza which has come at a high cost for journalists covering the ongoing crisis. As per Gaza’s government media office, 100 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the escalation of violence on October 7. Even as per conservative estimates by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on December 23, at least 69 journalists have been killed. These include 62 Palestinian, four Israeli, and three Lebanese journalists. The media watchdog in its investigations also found 15 journalists were reportedly injured in the violence and 20 have so far reportedly been arrested. 

On December 15, Al-Jazeera camera operator Samer Abu Daqqa was killed in what was believed to be an Israeli drone strike in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Images of mourners from his funeral the next day went viral and earned widespread condemnation. 

Nevertheless, attacks on journalists have continued. Those who have survived have faced arrests, intimidation, or harassment. On November 13, eight family members of photojournalist Yasser Qudih were killed when their house in southern Gaza was struck by four missiles, as per reports.  While Qudith survived the attack, the bombing occurred just five days after he and some other journalists were “marked” by a self-styled media watchdog HonestReporting which reportedly monitors anti-Israel reporting for alleged biases and prejudices. The organisation had on November 8 released a report in which it had accused Qudith and three other Gaza-based journalists of having prior knowledge of the October 7 Hamas attack. The report was later withdrawn by the organisation and even discredited by other international news wire services and major media platforms like Reuters. Nevertheless, Qudith’s name was tweeted by the Israel Prime Minister’s Office in which he had been dubbed an accomplice of “crimes against humanity”. 

The Israeli government has previously threatened to shut down Al Jazeera’s offices in Palestine. However, it has not done so yet. Nevertheless, Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet has blocked the websites and news programming of other media outlets like the  Lebanon-based, pro-Iranian channel Al Mayadeen. 

According to Palestinian residents in and outside Gaza as well as non-Palestinian or neutral activists, aid workers, medical workers, and journalists, disinformation and misreporting has become a big problem in this war. 

Meanwhile, Western media outlets have been accused of failing to humanise the Palestinian casualties or report on atrocities and human rights violations taking place in Gaza. In an over 2,000-word letter written to Al Jazeera, eight UK-based journalists employed by the BBC accused the latter of humanising Israeli victims and not Palestinian victims and also of omitting key contextual information and historical background in their reports. Such “double standards” in Western media’s coverage of war reportage (distinctly different from how these organisations have reported on the Russian war in Ukraine) were also observed in reports being published by the US-based The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others.

The NYT was criticised for using the phrase “Israel-Hamas War” to depict their coverage of the violence in Gaza. The phrase implies that Israel is at war with Hamas, which is an organisation with political as well as militant wings. In reality, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has carried on indiscriminately, killing combatants and non-combatants alike, flattening residential spaces, refugee camps, schools, and even hospitals. Last month, pro-Palestinian activists swarmed the office of NYT with posters with words like “The New York Crimes” and demanded that the outlet put its weight behind the call for a total ceasefire. In November, The Washington Post took down a cartoon that was being condemned as a racist and Islamophobic depiction of Palestinians and Arabs. Several outlets were also accused of using differential language for Israeli and Palestinian victims of violence. While Israeli victims were “killed”, “murdered”, or “slaughtered”, Palestinians simply “died”. 

Journalists reporting on Palestine from the outside have also been facing many challenges as most of them have to rely on freelancers or “citizen journalists” for their reports, or the Israeli and Palestinian governments and military offices. While coverage by freelancers and citizen journalists in Gaza has provided invaluable documentation of the war on Gaza and shed light on various violations of international standards, journalists often have no means to verify the information. This is true with information provided by either party’s official sources as well. Nevertheless, much of the reportage and information coming out of Gaza at present is thanks to some young local content creators/vloggers-turned-scribes who have been posting blow-by-blow updates of their lives and how they are surviving under assault. If not for them, much of the world may have remained unaware of the extremely harsh realities of living in Gaza today. 

In Outlook’s latest issue, several journalists including seasoned war reporters and citizen journalists from Gaza have shared their perspectives on the perils of covering war and the personal trauma and risks that journalists covering conflict have to live it. It also sheds light on the importance of citizen journalism and, sometimes, the simple act of “bearing witness”.