LONDON: Journalists at the Associated Press (AP) published an open letter on Monday condemning the decision by the company to fire journalist Emily Wilder for violating social media policies. 

Wilder, a Jewish journalist, was fired by the company only weeks after joining the AP in early May. The decision to fire her came shortly after rightwing conservatives at Stanford University, Wilder’s alma mater, published posts showing her pro-Palestinian activism while a college student. 

The open letter from journalists at the AP said: “It has left our colleagues — particularly emerging journalists — wondering how we treat our own, what culture we embrace and what values we truly espouse as a company.” 

The AP stated after the decision to remove Wilder that it would launch a review of its social media policies and asked volunteers to suggest changes to its guidelines. A committee will reportedly be formed in September to discuss recommendations. 

Heavy criticism of media outlets and social media platforms has emerged throughout the past few weeks over handling of news coverage from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Many media platforms were found to have exhibited bias against Palestinians through censoring pro-Palestinian-related posts, deleting accounts and cracking down on online pro-Palestinian activism. 

A report by 7amleh, The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, highlighted that more than 500 violations of Palestinian digital rights were detected during the span of one week. 

This prompted activists to launch a campaign to revive old Arabic script to bypass Facebook, Instagram and Twitter algorithms that ban, block or restrict content that includes words and hashtags such as “Palestine,” “resistance,” “Israel,” “Hamas,” and “al-Aqsa.”

Algorithms can detect certain words and flag posts and pictures that contain expressions and phrases deemed a breach of social media platforms’ community guidelines, or that incite hate or violence. However, many of the censored Palestine-related posts were shown to have merely documented events in the region.