PARIS: More than 250 media outlets in over 70 countries staged a front page protest Monday highlighting the deaths of scores of journalists in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, the Reporters Without Borders media freedom group said.
“At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no-one left to keep you informed,” the group’s general director Thibaut Bruttin said in a statement.
The protest was taken up on the website front pages of publications including Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera, British news site The Independent, French newspapers La Croix and L’Humanite and Germany’s TAZ and Frankfurter Rundschau, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Some 220 journalists have been killed during Israel’s Gaza campaign mounted in retaliation to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, according to RWB data.
The protest was staged one week after five journalists — some working for Al Jazeera, Associated Press and Reuters — were killed in Israeli strikes on the Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Yunis city. Earlier in August, six journalists were killed in another Israeli air strike outside the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
Israel said the strike on the Nasser hospital killings had targeted a Hamas camera. But the attack drew international condemnation. Even US President Donald Trump, a key Israeli ally, said he was “not happy.”
Media participating in Monday’s action “demand an end to impunity for Israeli crimes against Gaza’s reporters, the emergency evacuation of reporters seeking to leave the Strip and that foreign press be granted independent access,” the RWB statement statement.
RWB says it has filed four complaints at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes it says the Israeli army committed against journalists in Gaza over the past 22 months.
International media have been denied free access to the Gaza Strip since the war broke out.
A few selected outlets have embedded reporters with Israeli army units operating in the Palestinian territory, under condition of strict military censorship.
The Hamas 2023 attack killed 1,219 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official data. Some 47 people remain hostage in Gaza out of 251 originally abducted, though only around 20 are believed to be alive.
Israeli’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 63,459 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run government’s health ministry considered reliable by the United Nations.
International media protest over journalist deaths in Gaza
https://arab.news/wbfg3
International media protest over journalist deaths in Gaza
- More than 250 media outlets in over 70 countries staged a front page protest Monday highlighting the deaths of scores of journalists in Israel’s war on Gaza
- “At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no-one left to keep you informed:” RWB general director
Trump threatens $1 billion action as BBC apologises for speech edit
- Trump’s lawyers say broadcaster must retract documentary or face action
- BBC apologizes for ‘error of judgment,’ chair Shah rejects institutional bias
LONDON: US President Donald Trump has threatened the BBC with a billion-dollar lawsuit, US sources said, as the broadcaster apologized Monday for editing a speech that gave the impression he urged “violent action” just before the 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
Trump could seek $1 billion in damages from the BBC, a source close to his legal team said, amid a growing furor that prompted the resignations Sunday of two of the broadcaster’s top brass.
The source said the British broadcaster has been given until Friday to retract the 2024 documentary and apologize for the documentary broadcast just before the 2024 US presidential election.
Trump has been accused of launching lawsuits to stifle US media. But the latest controversy has reignited a debate over the British broadcaster, cherished by many but which has faced long-standing accusations of bias, from both ends of the political spectrum.
A spokesman for Trump’s private legal team confirmed that a letter had been sent to the BBC but did not give details.
“The BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally and deceitfully editing its documentary in order to try and interfere in the presidential election,” the spokesman said in a statement to AFP.
“President Trump will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in lies, deception, and fake news.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “We will review the letter and respond directly in due course.”
‘Vital role’
In a letter sent to MPs, BBC chairman Samir Shah said the broadcaster accepted that the editing of Trump’s speech for the documentary “did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”
“The BBC would like to apologize for that error of judgment,” he added, vowing to reform oversight within the broadcaster.
Director general Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness stepped down over the escalating backlash on Sunday.
Trump promptly celebrated, accusing BBC journalists of being “corrupt” and “dishonest.” His press secretary called the broadcaster “100-percent fake news.”
However, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesman told reporters the organization “has a vital role in an age of disinformation.”
“It’s important that the BBC acts swiftly to maintain trust and correct mistakes quickly when they occur,” he added.
The government is preparing a review of the BBC’s charter, which outlines the corporation’s governance and funding framework. The current charter ends in 2027.
The broadcaster, which has cut hundreds of jobs amid stretched finances, is funded by a license fee paid by anyone who watches live TV in Britain.
Some have welcomed the resignations as a timely reckoning for the BBC, while others fear the influence of right-wing detractors, including in the United States.
Ed Davey, leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, urged Starmer to tell Trump to “keep his hands off” the BBC.
Former BBC journalist Karen Fowler-Watt, head of the journalism department at City St. George’s University in London, told AFP the institution was “now really in a situation of crisis.”
She noted it was “very difficult not to see this as a right-wing attack, given the media ecosystem in which we all now live.”
Controversies
In London, Britons were both critical and sympathetic.
Jimmy, who works in construction and declined to give his surname, told AFP the BBC’s reputation had been “tarnished” and it had “shown that they’re not impartial.”
But 78-year-old writer Jennifer Kavanagh said it has “always been attacked from the right and from the left.”
“They can never get it right,” she added.
Its latest crisis intensified after the right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper reported last week that a former external standards adviser’s warnings of serious and widespread failings of impartiality and systemic bias had been ignored.
That included the editing of sections of Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech ahead of the mob attack on the US Capitol following the 2020 US presidential election.
It appeared he had told supporters he was going to walk there with them and “fight like hell,” whereas the president also told the audience in the intervening period “we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
Earlier this year, the BBC apologized for “serious flaws” in the making of another documentary, about the Gaza war, which the UK’s media watchdog deemed “materially misleading.”
It also faced criticism for failing to pull a livestream of punk-rap duo Bob Vylan during this year’s Glastonbury festival after its frontman made anti-Israel comments.
