Hoda Sherif writes:

In the heart of Gaza’s ruins, local Palestinian journalists are enduring the unimaginable toll of a merciless war machine, starvation, and unwarranted daily brutality. Meanwhile, Muslim journalists and others reporting on the war from the West are faced with a different kind of impediment: the battle against blood-washing discourse.

For the past 10 months, journalists across the world have voiced concerns to their employers over imbalanced, misleading, and at times, fictitious coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. These reporters have demanded more plausible and thoughtful accounts of Israel’s crimes against humanity—arguing that current narratives are obfuscating the magnitude of the devastation and sorrow of the Palestinian people. Instead of having their perspectives welcomed, these reporters have instead been left to fend largely for themselves.

On World Press Freedom Day, the National Writers Union published a report titled “Red Lines: Retaliation in the media industry during the Gaza conflict.” It documented 44 cases of retaliation against media workers—whether by way of assignment restriction, social-media suppression, or termination—in response to a belief that the accused either supported Palestinians or appeared “critical of the Israeli government.” The investigation did not yield a similar trend toward pro-Israeli media workers. According to the report, this wave of retaliation impacted more than a hundred media professionals across North America and Europe from October through February, a large portion of whom were of Middle Eastern, North African, or Muslim descent.

The effect of this is clear: the production of less news about the reality of Palestine. That task is left to the waning few still committed to journalistic principles of integrity, public accountability, and sensitivity to the human condition. [Continue reading…]