World Press Freedom Day 2025: Honouring the courage of Gaza’s journalists

Today, on 3rd May, we mark World Press Freedom Day, a moment to reflect on the role of journalism at this incredibly crucial time. Nowhere has that role been more fiercely upheld, nor more brutally punished, than in Gaza. In defiance of a campaign that has sought not only to silence them, but to erase them, they continue to report.

Journalism in its most dedicated form uncovers crimes and unsettles power. The example of Palestinian journalists in Gaza since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal assault in October 2023 will go down in history as the one of the most courageous and perilous commitments to journalistic work in modern history. Israel’s systematic targeting of those journalists, meanwhile, has been unprecedented in its deliberate scope and ferocity.

The killing of journalists in Gaza began soon after the Israeli genocidal campaign commenced, suggesting an active policy that was in fact a core component of Israel’s broader objectives.

In December 2023, just two months into the campaign, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said that the “war zone” in Gaza was the “most dangerous ever” for reporters. 75% of all reporters killed in the world in 2023 were killed between October – December 2023 and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has said that the mortality rate for media workers in the Gaza Strip is over 10%, an astonishing figure by historical standards. The current estimate is that over 200 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli bombing.

Crucially, both Palestinians inside Gaza and international organisations have been arguing that many of these killings have come from a policy of directly targeting journalists and their families.

Within Israel’s broader attempt to destroy the possibility of survival in the Gaza Strip and to shatter the population as a people, the targeting of journalists and media workers serves the purpose of breaking the flow of information, setting an example, and eroding the social infrastructure of the people in Gaza. This is why, early on in the assault, a number of buildings housing media offices in Gaza City were destroyed. The vast majority of media outlets were based in these buildings, as well as many of the Gaza Strip’s radio stations.

It is easy to forget that for the journalists inside Gaza who are dedicated to continuing their work, they must operate on top of the existing difficulties in trying to survive.

They carry out their reporting, including transporting equipment, whilst hungry and malnourished, exhausted, living in tents, and constantly having to move. They face communications disruptions and lack of electricity as well. And they themselves lose friends and family members to Israel’s relentless bombing.

In contrast, despite rare exceptions, the world of Western journalism, the supposed home of freedom of the press, has remained shockingly silent as their counterparts in Gaza are killed. Worse still, many of them, together with their outlets and broadcasters, have acted as key facilitators of Israel’s genocidal campaign. For those dedicated to telling the truth and exposing the crimes of our age, it is the Palestinian journalists inside Gaza who will stand as the example.

References

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/23/israel-is-deliberately-targeting-journalists-in-gaza-experts

https://www.ifj.org/war-in-gaza

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/03/25/al-jazeera-journalist-targeted-in-gaza-if-you-re-reading-this-it-means-i-ve-been-killed_6739505_4.html#

https://www.dw.com/en/how-reporting-in-gaza-is-a-deadly-assignment-for-palestinian-journalists/a-72073519