One year on, the Israel-Hamas war has taken an unprecedented toll on journalists

(CNN) — Even before the horrifying events of October 7, 2023, it was an intense year for journalists based in Israel and the Palestinian territories, with record levels of violence and mass protests against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul rocking major cities.

But the shocking terror attacks from Hamas — the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust — brought with it a flood of outside reporters and focus of the world as the ensuing war rages on and seemingly expands.

In the year since the devastating war began, a record number of media workers have lost their lives, the vast majority as the result of the Israeli military’s bombardment of Gaza. Reporters have faced physical threats for their coverage and major obstacles in getting information out of the warzone – especially from Gaza. Journalists have also endured internal newsroom pressure and vitriolic attacks from readers and viewers over any perceived bias or error.

The October 7 attacks and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza has roiled the region like never before, challenging the news media’s coverage and upending the region’s politics and policy for generations to come.

An ‘unprecedented’ toll

The year since the war began has been the deadliest for media workers since most journalism and press freedom organizations have started tracking journalist deaths in conflict.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, at least 128 journalists have been killed since the beginning of the war, nearly all of them Palestinian media workers in Gaza killed as a result of Israeli airstrikes. Some of the journalists died while wearing protective gear identifying them as members of the press. Multiple news organizations and free press groups have accused the Israeli military of deliberately targeting journalists.

“One year in, Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza has exacted an unprecedented and horrific toll on Palestinian journalists and the region’s media landscape,” CPJ said.

The Israeli military has repeatedly said it does not intentionally target journalists, but that it cannot guarantee the safety of reporters in an “active military zone” and has accused Hamas of deliberately placing military operations “in the vicinity of journalists and civilians.” It has also accused a handful of Palestinian journalists as having participated in the Oct. 7 attack or being members of Hamas, something the media organizations have largely and vehemently denied. But even excluding these accusations, the toll on media workers is astronomical.

Many media organizations, including CNN, evacuated their full-time staff in the enclave with their families as soon as possible. Gaza was never an easy place to report from, between restrictions on entry and exit and pressure from Hamas against any inkling of dissent. But now, seemingly nowhere is safe, and the journalists who are left are operating in harsh conditions and having to contend with just surviving in an active war zone.

“A few brave Palestinian journalists in Gaza have continued to work for international media, braving extremely difficult conditions to continue reporting, the likes of which few veteran war reporters have experienced,” said Tania Kraemer, chair of the Foreign Press Association based in Jerusalem and a correspondent for German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle. “They face the constant threat of Israeli bombardment and have a hard time moving around. They also face the challenges faced by other Palestinians in Gaza: They are displaced, often living in tents without sufficient basic supplies in a situation of widespread chaos and lawlessness and are responsible for their families.”

Reporters in Israel have also noted a marked increase in physical attacks, with the Union of Journalists in Israel noting at least 40 such attacks since October 7, from security forces as well as civilians. Four Israeli journalists were killed in the October 7 attacks, and others barely survived.

Access and pressure

One of the biggest challenges for international news organizations has been the complete blockade of the Gaza strip by Israel (and supported by Egypt) of foreign reporters entering the enclave.

Although the Israeli military has taken international reporters on dozens of “embeds” with their troops, the reporters on these trips have no freedom of movement and are not allowed to speak to Palestinians. The raw footage is also subject to Israeli military censorship. CNN’s Clarissa Ward is one of the only foreign journalists to have entered the strip without the Israeli military, when she embedded with a United Arab Emirates field hospital crew.

The FPA has petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to force the military to allow journalists to enter Gaza independently. So far, they’ve been unsuccessful.

The Israeli government has also taken unprecedented steps that have pressured international press in Israel – most notably by shutting down Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel and the West Bank, alleging the network is “being used to incite terror, to support terrorist activities and that the channel’s broadcasts endanger … security and public order.” Al Jazeera, the Israeli Journalists Union, the FPA and many international organizations have slammed the move.

Israeli authorities have also become far more aggressive with the foreign press – at one point earlier this year Israeli authorities seized the video equipment of an Associated Press team that was airing live footage of the Gaza skyline as seen from southern Israel. Within a day, the equipment was hastily returned after swift backlash from the US and free press groups.

Constant vitriol

For the foreign journalists covering the conflict, the internal and external pressures over their reporting have been unlike anything they’ve ever experienced, several reporters who spoke with CNN said. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about sensitive subjects.

An American journalist covering the conflict told CNN he’s taken on criticism, including from within his own newsroom, for interviewing figures that others found abhorrent whether they be an Israeli soldier, a Palestinian civilian, a rescued Israeli hostage or a member of Hamas.

“Old school journalism is that you are curious about every player, and you want to understand what motivates them, and you want to understand their story, and you want to see things through their eyes, but I’ve experienced just really shocking pushback,” he said.

On social media, the criticism has been more intense.

“American journalists are talking to all the sides. That’s what we do. It’s the audiences that reject that very principle,” the reporter said.

The reporter has come to see that Palestinians and Israelis, and those that support them, are experiencing the war with each other from “irreconcilable worlds” that are not able to understand “how their pain is wrapped up in the other people’s pain.”

“You’re trying to do this superhuman task, which is be in everybody’s shoes and and try to convey and be true to the fullness of this war,” he said. But “this story really fundamentally makes you kind of question all the journalistic tenants that you were taught.”

BBC News CEO Deborah Turness wrote in a memo ahead of the October 7 anniversary that “this is the most polarizing conflict that any of us have experienced in our careers as journalists.”

“[I]f there is one thing we have learned more than any other in the past year, it’s that such is the depth of the polarization in this war, so many have come to see impartial reporting as being somehow against them, because it does not solely reflect their view of the conflict,” she wrote.

A choice of words

In the Middle East, a single word, or even the order in which certain phrases are uttered, can convey some sort of perceived bias. When should a person or a group be labeled a terrorist? What about a war crime? When should a military operation be called an invasion? Even laying out a timeline of when this latest conflict began is loaded with meaning.

Some reporters noted that in recent years American and other foreign media have started shifting how they describe aspects of the conflict, such as calling the West Bank “occupied,” and noting Israeli villages in the West Bank as “illegal settlements under international law.”

“People have woken up to things that maybe we didn’t pay attention to before,” a foreign reporter based in the region said. The war has made reporters and their audiences “a lot more vigilant and cynical,” with credibility issues from both Palestinian and Israeli sides.

Janine Zacharia, a lecturer at Stanford University’s Department of Communications and former Jerusalem Bureau Chief for The Washington Post, said the news media can often get mired in a word choice debate when they shouldn’t.

“People say, ‘You shouldn’t say militants. You should say terrorists on one side,’ and then the other side says, ‘You’ve got to call this a genocide. How can you not call this a genocide?’ So, I go back to what I learned at Reuters in the ‘90s, which is to say what it is, say what happened,” Zacharia said. “It’s better to say what’s happening more specifically on the ground and resist, when you can, labels that are disputed.”

Professor William Lafi Youmans of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs said he has found that there “has been an intensification of sedimented, institutionalized bias” toward Israeli framing over the past year, especially in television news.

Youmans said his research has shown “Palestinian frames” of the conflict using words like “occupation” and “apartheid,” are “rarely voiced on broadcast television” by reporters or anchors themselves, compared to “Israeli frames,”  such as describing Hamas members as “terrorists.” Youmans also noted that Israeli officials “are far more present” than Palestinian or Hamas officials. (The United States and European Union have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. Hamas is also the governing body of Gaza and administers all aspects of life there.)

Others of course, argue the opposite. A former BBC governor, along with a former BBC director of television published a report claiming the broadcaster has routinely parroted anti-Israel views.

The personal toll

The pressures on the press in the region — Palestinian, Israeli and foreign — are of course, astronomical after a year of nonstop, difficult work. Beyond the physical threats, many have also faced mental health challenges from witnessing horrific violence both in person and from the vast documentation streaming into their newsrooms every hour. Then there’s relentless criticism of their work.

One reporter told CNN he has had “physical reactions” to footage of the October 7 attacks, as well as the images and videos of victims in Gaza. Another said they can no longer eat red meat because of the images they’ve seen. Others have faced health problems from stress and have had personal relationships suffer due to their coverage.

“Maybe I’m just numb,” one of the foreign reporters said with a cynical chuckle as he described what has become routine coverage of relentless airstrikes in Gaza. “You don’t want to be numb, but when you’ve done it 100 times already, that’s not a good thing.”

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