Why journalists are failing to do their jobs reporting Gaza

Since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, hundreds of foreign journalists from across the world, including journalists and film crews from Japan and China and Russia, have filed countless news stories, analysis pieces, filmed interviews with suffering Palestinian women and children and above all, an endless stream of the most heart-rending videos of the daily carnage in Gaza.

These hundreds of journalists are based in Israel from where they do their reporting. Their film crews are based in Israel. Some of the big US television networks have teams of 20 or more—reporters, camera operators, sound recordists— producing the network news coverage of Gaza. They are all based in Israel.

There are no foreign journalists in Gaza. The videos of carnage are taken by Gazans. A lot of the videos shown on screens across the world have been taken from social media. Some videos have been filmed by local journalists in Gaza and they are paid by the foreign media companies for it.

All the reports of what is happening in Gaza come from local journalists employed by the foreign media companies. Some of these journalists have proven to be members of Hamas. All of them do their journalism at the pleasure of Hamas. Was their reporting to displease Hamas, they would be forced out of journalism. One way or another.

Some of the local journalists have been killed by Israeli air strikes. The number is disputed. It is even in dispute how many of them were journalists rather that Hamas operatives and how many were killed doing journalism. The deaths of journalists covering a war is a war crime. But I do not believe there is any credible evidence that shows Israeli pilots deliberately targeted journalists.