Radiance News Service
Nov. 13, 2023
More than 750 journalists, including editors and reporters from the Washington Post, MSNBC, the Guardian, Jewish Currents, HuffPost, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Beast, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, and Sky News, signed an open letter condemning the killing of journalists in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
“We condemn Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza and urge integrity in Western media coverage of Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians,” the letter reads.
“As reporters, editors, photographers, producers, and other workers in newsrooms around the world, we are appalled at the slaughter of our colleagues and their families by the Israeli military and government. We are writing to urge an end to violence against journalists in Gaza and to call on Western newsroom leaders to be clear-eyed in coverage of Israel’s repeated atrocities against Palestinians,” the letter added.
The letter also holds western newsrooms accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Double-standards, inaccuracies and fallacies abound in American publications and have been well-documented. More than 500 journalists signed an open letter in 2021, outlining concerns that U.S. media outlets ignore Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Yet the call for fair coverage has gone unanswered.
“Newsrooms have instead undermined Palestinian, Arab and Muslim perspectives, dismissing them as unreliable and have invoked inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes. They have printed misinformation spread by Israeli officials and failed to scrutinize indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza – committed with the support of the U.S. government,” the letter further said.
“An investigation from Reporters Without Borders also shows deliberate targeting of journalists during the October 13 Israeli strikes in South Lebanon, which killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists,” the signatories of the letter said.
