Committee to Protect Journalists – Defending Journalists Worldwide.

Israel-Gaza war impact gets harder to document

Smoke rises from the southern Gaza city of Rafah following Israeli airstrikes on May 6, 2024. (Reuters/Hatem Khaled)

As the Israel-Gaza war enters its eighth month, the verification of information about journalists killed, injured, and arrested, has slowed to a crawl.

A CPJ report finds that the unprecedented number of deaths, with more than 90 Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces since the start of the war, displacement, and censorship are all making it exponentially harder for the organization’s researchers to confirm information about the conflict’s devastating impact on Gaza’s media community – and, by extension, about the broader impact of the war.

“At the start of the war it would take us a day or two to verify information about a journalist who had been killed or injured,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “Collecting and vetting this information is now taking us weeks or months, and in some cases won’t be possible at all.”

Reasons for the slowdown include the decimation and displacement of Gaza’s media community, leaving fewer local journalists to provide details about the fate of their colleagues; communications blackouts; and food and fuel shortages that make it a struggle for those left to continue reporting.

More CPJ coverage of the Israel-Gaza war
CPJ calls for investigation into Israeli shooting at 2 Al-Araby TV journalists; condemns Al-Jazeera shutdown

CPJ: Authorities must allow journalists to safely cover US campus protests

FOX 7 Austin photojournalist Carlos Sanchez arrested and being led away by authorities on April 24. (Photo: KXAN/YouTube) — FOX 7 Austin photojournalist Carlos Sanchez was arrested on April 24 while covering a protest at the Universty of Texas at Austin. (Photo: KXAN/YouTube)

With tensions over pro-Palestinian protests escalating on college campuses across the United States, the Committee to Protect Journalists calls on university authorities and law enforcement agencies to allow reporters to freely cover the demonstrations.

“Journalists – including student journalists who have been thrust into a national spotlight to cover stories in their communities — must be allowed to cover campus protests without fearing for their safety,” said CPJ U.S., Canada and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen on Wednesday. “Any efforts by authorities to stop them doing their jobs have far-reaching repercussions on the public’s ability to be informed about current events.”

Journalists Attacked

Hamza Al Dahdouh

MURDERED

Hamza Al Dahdouh, 27, a Palestinian journalist and cameraman for the Qatari-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera, was killed alongside freelance video journalist Mustafa Thuraya in an Israeli drone strike on January 7, 2024.

On the day of the attack, Al Dahdouh and Thuraya joined a group of more than 10 journalists to report on the aftermath of an Israeli strike on a home that occurred on January 6. As they were returning from the assignment for Al-Jazeera, the strike targeted the two journalists’ car in Nasr village, known locally as Moraj, northeast of Rafah in southern Gaza.

Al Dahdouh is the son of Gaza’s Al-Jazeera bureau chief, Wael Al Dahdouh, who had previously lost four other family members in Israeli attacks.

Learn more about Al Dahdouh