Killing the messenger: Press freedom under siege from Gaza to the West

Last Saturday was marked as World Press Freedom Day as campaigns to silence journalists has gathered momentum around the world, including in Western countries which claim to be beacons of free speech and democracy. Coverage of Israel's war on Gaza was cited as a bad example by UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese who declared on X that mainstream western media did not seem to have "any sense of journalism ethics." She responded to a post saying that Israel's liberal daily Haaretz covers the “brutality” of the war in a way that Western media outlets are not. This is true to some extent, in particular when it comes to reporting what is happening to Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed in 2024, the highest number in the 39 years the organisation has been gathering data. Nearly two-thirds of the fatalities (82) were in Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank. Journalists were also slain in Sudan, Pakistan, Mexico, Syria, Myanmar, Iraq and Haiti, Hundreds were threatened, assaulted, arrested, imprisoned in these countries and elsewhere. There have been clamp-downs on journalists in Russia, Afghanistan, and Iran. The United States has seen journalists and newspapers under pressure to toe the official line during the second Trump administration. Since Hamas's October 7th, 2023, attack on Israel, Gaza's journalists have become the largest number killed in a single conflict. Walid El Houri wrote on Global Voices.

Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Ajith Sunghay said Gaza is one of the world’s deadliest places for journalists. He told the Turkish news agency Anadolu as there are "suggestions that journalists could have been killed intentionally, this could be war crimes and have to be investigated thoroughly... and perpetrators brought to justice." Although the UN and non-governmental agencies have called for independent probes, none have been launched. There is no accountability.

This UN office verified the killing of 212 journalists, 28 of whom were women, in Gaza since October 7th, 2023. UNESCO reported 47 were killed on duty and, as of April 29th, and 49 were detained by Israel. Foreign journalists have been banned by Israel from entering Gaza except for occasional embeds with the Israeli army. The Foreign Correspondents Association in Israel has demanded Israel lift the ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza and has petitioned the Israeli high court to get the ban lifted.

The UN office said, "Palestinian journalists endure the trauma of both living under and reporting on the devastation and death inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza by Israel’s military campaign. They are forced to balance the fear for their lives with their professional commitment to go out and report on daily horrors." Helmets and blue vests intended to protect journalists could instead make them targets.

Several Palestinian journalists have been killed along with their families. The latest was photojournalist Fatima Hassouna who was killed on April 16th, along with ten members of her family in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Gaza City. She was starred in a documentary film, "Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk," which is to be shown during the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Before the strike that killed her, she declared in a social media post, “If I die, I want a loud death. I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group.” The families of more than six other journalists were slain by indiscriminate Israeli strikes.

While the situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is not as deadly as in Gaza the UN monitor reports the detention of journalists, some arbitrarily. "Many are held under administrative detention, while others have been detained under broad allegations of 'incitement' for social media posts...as part of wider ongoing efforts to silence civil society and annihilate any form of opposition to the military occupation. Both men and women journalists detained by

Israeli security forces have reported to the UN Human Rights Office that they have been subjected to beatings, humiliation and sexual and gender-based violence during interrogations about their journalistic work." The UN also cites the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and Hamas ruled Gaza for harassing and threatening journalists and limiting their work.

Israel is ranked 112 out of 180 in Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2025 World Press Freedom Index, a fall of 11 places since last year and the lowest ranking for Israel since 2002. RSF said, "Press freedom, media plurality and editorial independence have been increasingly restricted in Israel since the start of the war in Gaza." In 2022, before the Netanyahu government took office, Israel was ranked 86th in the world. Today it is classified as "difficult." The categories are good, satisfactory, problematic, difficult and serious.RSF reported that the decline has continued this year. Consequently, the index "now stands at an unprecedented, critical low [and] the global state of press freedom is now classified as a 'difficult situation' for the first time in the history of the index." The world map published by the Index shows that in only four countries, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Estonia is the situation "good." Poland, France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Gabon, Suriname, Australia, and Canada the situation is ranked "satisfactory." The US has joined a host of countries where the situation is problematic." This is likely to slide further under the Trump administration.