Does the word “PRESS” on a flak jacket keep a journalist safe or make them a target? Alan and Lionel hear from the CPJ’s chief executive Jodie Ginsberg and speak to AFP’s Global News Director Phil Chetwynd, who has a team reporting from inside Gaza and who highlights an incident when journalists were seemingly targeted by Israeli guns. Alan also gives insight on dealing with Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, whose latest high profile court proceedings began this week.
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This transcript has been edited for clarity:
Alan Rusbridger:
Hello and welcome to Media Confidential, Prospect Magazine’s weekly inspection of journalism and the media world. Analysing the decisions and interviewing the decision makers. I’m Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber:
And I’m Lionel Barber. On this episode--
[News clip]:
In its annual report, the Committee to Protect Journalists said 99 journalists and media workers worldwide were killed while doing their job last year. They include 72 Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces. That’s nearly 75% of the worldwide total.
[News clip]:
CPJ is investigating whether a dozen journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war were deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers.
Alan:
Does the word “Press” on a flak jacket help protect journalists or make them a target?
Lionel:
Listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter. We are @mediaconfpod.
Alan:
Lionel, I can see snow on your boots. This gives me a clue to where you are. Where are you?
Lionel:
I’m in Aspen, Colorado. The amazing thing here is that there are very few people on the mountain. Because I come from a financial background, I can only assume that Aspen has literally priced itself out of the market. The only people who can afford to ski are people with many zeros. That’s not me.
Alan: I’m in soggy old London. No snow on my boots. I listened to a fascinating podcast this morning. I don’t know if you’ve heard it. Anthony Scaramucci talking to our so-called rivals on the rest of politics. You’ve got a name check, Lionel, from Scaramucci himself.
Lionel:
[chuckles] That’s interesting. I suspect it was probably a bit of a slap around the chops.
Alan:
He said that you referred to him, I think the phrase was, the Tony Soprano on the Potomac. Yes. Does that ring a bell?
Lionel:
No, but I referred to Donald Trump as Tony Soprano on the Potomac. Scaramucci is, as usual, exaggerating.
Alan:
It’s a very good value. He’s crazy, but good value. The other thing that’s caught my attention, I don’t know if you saw this, Lionel, that All3Media has been bought by our friends at IMI, RedBird. All3Media is gone for a little over a billion, which means that Sheikh Mansour now owns Fleabag.
Lionel:
Wow. That’s a bit counterintuitive.
Alan:
He may not get the Telegraph, but he owns Fleabag.
Lionel:
I’m also in the business of looking at interesting stories about money raising. The story that’s caught my eye is Anthropic, which is this AI startup rival to ChatGPT. Alan, they are raising $750 million through a VC firm in California called Menlo Ventures. The valuation, Alan, is close to $18 billion. These numbers are absolutely extraordinary, which tells you something about where the media market is going.
Alan:
There was another small paragraph that caught my eye of Reddit, which is, I think, one of the better social media companies. Did you see this? They had sold the training data to AI, i.e., permission to scrape their content, for £60 million. I think that’s one of the first deals that’s been done and helps give some sense of the value of large text databases once these large language learning models are going to start being set loose on them.
Lionel:
25 years ago, everybody was sticking a dot-com moniker on their company and getting a huge valuation. In those days, it was all about getting content. Now it’s data. If you’ve got AI somewhere in your-well, Alan, you’ve got the A, but you haven’t got the I. That’s a terrible joke early in the morning, but there we go. What are you looking at in London?
Alan:
I was down at the High Court yesterday to see the first day of Julian Assange’s hearing. The hearing itself, because it’s the Court of Appeal and it’s all on very technical legal grounds, was quite dry. Outside the court was hundreds of people and journalists from all over the world there. It’s one of these sort of strange stories where people have forgotten about Julian Assange, I think, because he’s been out of sight, literally out of sight, out of mind but I do think it’s an important case.
Lionel:
Indeed, and he is facing up to 17 charges under the Espionage Act. That’s that 1919, I think, Act passed in the wake of the First World War when there were a lot of concern in the states, that’s the Espionage Act in the states, about the Red Scare communists coming into America. It’s pretty draconian legislation. I guess the key point is, Julian Assange a journalist, is he directly responsible for threatening national security? Or is he at, one, removed because he was essentially the filter who passed on the information to the Guardian and the New York Times, et cetera.?
Alan:
Two things have occurred to me this week. One is, whether he’s a journalist or not, I don’t think anybody seriously thinks that what he was doing in 2010-11 was spying. It wasn’t espionage. The reason they want to do him under the Espionage Act is that he literally has no defense. I think that’s why journalists need to wake up and worry about this case because if they’re successful in doing him under the Espionage Act, that means that it opens a chink for governments who, of course, don’t want national security reporting to be done to be able to really go after journalists in future, people who are not like Assange.
Lionel:
Yes, as you say, he’s the source and the publisher, perhaps, of the information rather than the journalist. Is that right, would you say?
Alan:
I think the difficulty with Assange is he’s many things. He’s an impresario, he’s a hacker, he’s a businessman, he’s a publisher, he’s a journalist, he’s an activist. He’s all those things. He wears many hats. It’s just not espionage. That was the main focus of his case. His KC, Edward Fitzgerald, was saying espionage in its very nature is a political act, and the political acts are supposed to be excluded from the extradition treaty. That seems to be a pretty convincing argument but whether the judges are going to go with that or not, I don’t know.
Lionel:
Beyond the legal case, it would be interesting, I think, for listeners, for you to give just a short portrait of what it was like dealing with Julian Assange when you were publishing the WikiLeaks story.
Alan:
Just as he’s got this sort of chameleon-like ability to shift shape into multiple identities, so it was dealing with him. Some days it was like dealing with a sort of highly polished CEO. He could take charge of a meeting, be very strategic and organised, almost visionary. Other days he was completely impossible. He would be just completely unreasonable. I remember him one evening just marching into my office with two lawyers and making all kinds of demands. This was about 6:30 in the evening. We were still at it at one o’clock in the morning.
Lionel:
Right near deadline.
[laughter]
Alan:
He was just wanting to withdraw all copies. I can’t even remember. I think it was because he was upset that we had bought the New York Times in as a co-partner. In the end, at one o’clock in the morning, I said, “Look, Julian, you’ve got two choices. We have all the material. We are going to publish it so you can stay in or you can flounce out.” He was fascinating to deal with and impossible to deal with. I think he has alienated a lot of people. In the end, you have to put aside your feelings about him and look at the bigger picture.
Lionel:
Just on the treatment of sources, was he a bit cavalier? Did it require you and then the editor of the New York Times at the time, Bill Keller, to say, “Look, we need to protect the sources here”?
Alan:
While we were working together, he played ball. I think that may not have been his instinct, but I have to say we all said we would defend all the work that we did together. I think there was a bit of him that thought this was censorship. I remember a later bizarre meeting with him where we hadn’t spoken for about a year and I had to go and meet him in a secret location and walked into this room where he was filming. There was somebody filming the moment I walked into the room. He wanted to question me about why we had redacted certain documents.
He was very suspicious of what he would think of as mainstream media and our reasons. Quite often, the reasons were mundane things to do with the law of libel, you thought, oh, we couldn’t possibly publish that piece, as much as national security. Anyway, I hope he is freed. I hope he goes back to Australia, where the government, I think, is now well behind him. I hope that this unfortunate precedent of using espionage and official secrecy against journalists or people doing journalistic things stops.
Lionel:
I’ll second that.
[music]
Alan:
Take out a digital subscription to Prospect and enjoy a one-month free trial to our digital content. You’ll immediately get full access to rigorously fact-checked truly independent analyses and perspectives. There’s no commitment, you can cancel at any time. To take advantage of this offer, visit our website or go to your favorite search engine and search for Prospect Magazine subscription. Now we’re really pleased to be joined by Jodie Ginsburg, who is the CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Jodie was previously running Index on Censorship and before that worked for Reuters, Jodie, welcome. Perhaps you could just begin by very briefly explaining what CPJ is and what it does.
Jodie Ginsburg:
The Committee to Protect Journalists was established over 40 years ago to advocate on behalf of journalists and to keep them safe. The idea was that by documenting threats to journalists and by advocating on their behalf, we could make sure that they were protected, but also that in so doing, press freedom was protected. The first journalists actually, that CPJ advocated on behalf of were British journalists who were detained during the Falklands War. Since then, we have spread our wings and now help journalists all over the world, including in the US and elsewhere where they’re under threat.
Unfortunately, they are under threat like never before.
Alan:
Jodie, on your website, you are keeping a rolling catalog of all the casualties and deaths in the Israel-Gaza conflict. I think this must be the grimmest death toll of any war in recent memory. Can you just talk a bit about what you’re finding?
Jodie:
Yes, the war in Israel and Gaza is the deadliest conflict for journalists that CPJ has ever documented. We’ve been documenting attacks on the press specifically for more than three decades. In the first 10 weeks of the war, more journalists died than have ever died in a single country over an entire year, more than 70 journalists were killed, most of them Palestinian, and of course, most of them in Gaza.
Lionel:
Can you explain why there’s such a heavy death toll? Is this about Israeli army tactics?
Jodie:
There’s a number of factors. Of course, the nature of the war itself, we’ve seen indiscriminate bombing, we’ve seen bombings of the entire territory. It’s important to remember, Gaza is a very small strip of territory. Essentially, there has been nowhere that’s really been safe for anyone in Gaza, and certainly not journalists. There’s the fact that journalists go to report on the aftermath of bombing. They go to hospitals, and then, of course, hospitals have been attacked, or they go to refugee camps to report on the movement and the displacement of people. We’ve seen refugee camps attacked.
It’s not like traditional war reporting, where there are clearly two sides. It’s clear where you can be safe, there’s no space to be safe. On top of that, we believe there’s evidence that journalists have been also specifically targeted. I can talk about a couple of those cases.
Lionel:
Before you do that, tell us a little bit more about where you’re getting the information so that you feel that the sourcing for this, these shocking statistics is actually reliable.
Jodie:
Of course, we’ve taken the same approach that we take with all of our documentation. We use a journalistic approach. We must have at least two sources of the killing or an attack on a journalist. That might mean speaking to a colleague, a friend, we might look at other news sources who’ve documented that, and also for their work. We have researchers based all over the world, we actually hired additional researchers for this work, when it became clear, unfortunately, the volume of killings in such a short space of time.
We actually hired additional people to make sure that we could double and triple check to be sure that they are journalists under our definitions, and that we’re clear about the way that they may have been killed. We continue to update that this is a war, it’s a live war, getting information is very difficult. Remember, of course, that Gazan journalists are pretty much the only journalists able to report on Gaza inside Gaza because no other journalists have really been allowed in. We continue to gather information continually and update our databases as we find new information.
Alan:
The Israelis obviously push back on this notion that anyone has been deliberately targeted. What are the cases you found where you have strong suspicion that actually being a journalist has made your target?
Jodie:
We’re looking at about a dozen cases, but they include one that is now fairly well documented, which is the killing of the Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah on the Lebanese border. He was reporting with a group of other journalists, including AFP reporters and others. When the group was hit by an Israeli strike, there was no other military action happening at the time. Those individuals were clearly wearing press insignia and working from an area that’s very well known to be an area from which journalists operate has fairly good size.
A number of independent reports have concluded that that group was deliberately targeted. We also, of course, know that the son of Wael Dahdour, who is the Al Jazeera Gaza City Bureau chief, and another freelance journalist, Mustafa Thuraya, were killed in their car when they were going to report on a humanitarian corridor. The Israelis have said that those individuals were targeted, but they also have said that they believe those individuals to have been terrorists. We have seen no convincing evidence of that.
Actually, that’s a pattern that we have documented over a number of years in which the Israelis initially deny responsibility, then they accept responsibility, but often accuse the journalists of having been a terrorist or a militant. Then fail to produce any evidence or hold any meaningful investigation.
Lionel:
Jodie, is there any suggestion that the Israelis are taking on board your evidence and criticisms of what appear to be irresponsible behavior by the armed forces?
Jodie:
We’re still waiting for responses to a number of our questions in relation to the cases we want specifically investigated. We get very little response. Often they’re simply a rejection that that person is a journalist, but we get very little engagement. Again, this is a pattern that we’ve seen prior to this conflict, we produced a report called Deadly Pattern. We produced it in May of last year. Obviously well before this current war started that showed over the past 22 years, 20 journalists have been killed, 18 of them Palestinian, and in not a single case that there ever been a proper investigation or accountability.
The response we get back is very limited. Of course, we would expect that in particular during a war. Of course, what we continue to push to do is make sure that we can document as much as possible so that there is as much evidence as possible for when we are able to have fuller investigations.
Alan:
Your critics are sceptical about your definition of journalists. They say you’ve produced all these names, but some of these people are not really journalists. You’ll be aware of the work of there’s a British researcher called David Collier, who says, “Look, he’s been through your names. Actually, some of these people are actively supporting terrorists, then that you can’t call them journalists.” How do you respond to that?
Jodie:
Our list does include journalists, and we’re very clear about this. We’re very transparent about this on the website. In all of our documentation, who work for Hamas-affiliated outfits like Al Aqsa. It’s really important, I think, to remember that, whether you like it or not, Hamas was the ruling body for Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal and during the blockade. Even in the most militant or even authoritarian regimes, there are journalistic outfits, including those allied to the regime’s doing journalism doing the work of news gathering, and they’re always and have always been included in our lists.
We don’t include people who we have evidence to show have directly incited violence or where there is clear proof that they are militant,. If we have evidence, for example, that someone is holding a gun or has been involved in militant activity, then they are removed from our list. Otherwise, we consider them to be journalists doing the work of journalism of news gathering and providing information to the population.
Alan:
There’s one example that Collier cites and I wouldn’t expect you to be on top of every one of the names on the list but there’s one on your list who’s called Ahmad Shehab. Collier says he was working for the Voice of Prisoners Radio which is an Islamic Jihad outlet. He says he was a high-ranking commander of the Islamic Jihad terror group. “Even if we accept that working for the Voice of Prisoners Radio is acceptable which I don’t accept,” he says, “his death is incidental. He died because he was in the house with a leader of the Islamic Jihad.”
Jodie:
I think there’s two separate things there. One is does the fact that he worked for Voice of the Prisoners mean that he’s not really a journalist because David Collier doesn’t believe that Voice of Prisoners is a legitimate news outlet is one question. We had and have considered Shehab a journalist because he worked for a news outlet and was doing work that we consider to be journalism. The second question I think is can you count people whose deaths were, and I really hate this word, incidental who died because they happen to be in a house that happened to be bombed and that’s just the nature of war.
We have chosen as CPJ and we did the same thing in Ukraine to consider people to be on our list of killed journalists or injured journalists whether or not as a casualty of war because the environment in which they’re operating is one in which journalists cannot be safe. In other words, we can’t prove in particularly this day and age whether an individual was typing away on a particular story when they were killed but they were in that environment as a journalist and therefore they deserve to be counted on our list and the environment in which they’re working has led them to be vulnerable and unsafe.
Alan:
We should probably say that the Palestinian journalist syndicate says that they’ve recorded many more than you have. They say 120 journalists have been killed in Gaza
Jodie:
Right, and as I said we continue to verify so the number that we have, I think it’s currently 85 who’ve been killed in the Israel-Gaza war are the ones that we have been able to verify as being both journalists and whose deaths we’ve been able to verify.
Alan:
Jodie, I know you were recently in Doha. Can you tell us about the reaction there about how they see the, as they would say, lack of response to all these deaths?
Jodie:
Yes, I was in Doha because two journalists who have become fairly familiar faces of this war Wael Dahdour, the Al Jazeera Gaza City Bureau Chief and Motaz Azaiza who I think Alan you have written about for Prophet Magazine, a photojournalist who became very well known on Instagram for documenting the war were both in Qatar for medical reasons and respite reasons. I’d gone to meet them and to understand from them a little bit about the realities of reporting on this war.
I also met many senior reporters from outlets like Al Jazeera and Al Arabi who really had a powerful message for the international media community and it was where is the solidarity? People feel utterly abandoned they feel betrayed by their colleagues in international media who have been very vocal in, they feel in previous conflicts about the importance of a free press. They feel that there had been very little public outpouring of support for Gazan journalists.
The reflection was that made everyone in the region which is not traditionally a region supportive of free speech feel vulnerable. If they won’t speak out for our Gazan colleagues, when will they speak out for us? Would they speak out for us if the same kind of threat happened? That sense of betrayal that sense of abandonment was extremely powerful. The questions were where are the editorials, where are the statements of support? It’s true that there has been very little public support for many of the international media organisations very few editorials and support.
We had one last week from the Financial Times and there’s previously been one from the Guardian showing solidarity for Gazan journalists who and I know I’ve said this already who are the people reporting on the war inside Gaza because international journalists are not allowed in?
Alan:
Why do you think that is, Jodie? what do you say to them when they ask you why is this?
Jodie:
I think there are a number of reasons. I’ve been a journalist for more than 20 years the subject that is always the most controversial and difficult to report on in newsrooms has always been Israel. People have very, very strong emotional personal reactions to the coverage. Particularly in the United States where I’m based, there’s a fear that any kind of support shown for Palestinians will be in some way viewed as anti-semitic. I think newsrooms haven’t always been very good at showing solidarity for colleagues particularly outside of the West.
Our colleagues in Sudan also obviously facing extremely difficult conditions, news organisations tend to be much slower at recognising those individuals and the threats that they face. The consequence of that lack of solidarity, I think we need to think about. At some point, international journalists will be allowed into Gaza and we all need to report on the aftermath of the war. I think the after-effect of this war and the way that the international community have responded will be felt for years if not decades. I think that’s important for us to think about and reflect on.
Alan:
Thank you so much Jodie for joining us. Your work is so important and it must be really difficult and trying at times but thank you for doing it.
Jodie:
Thank you.
Alan:
This is Media Confidential and coming up we’ll speak to a news director with a team of reporters covering the war from Gaza.
Alan:
In this week’s Prospect Podcast, we hear from historian and author Timothy Garton Ash. Timothy reflects on the recent news coming out of Russia on the death of Alexei Navalny, plus a dark phase in the war between Ukraine and Russia with Ukraine seemingly on the back foot at least for the moment.
Timothy Garton Ash:
Ukrainian soldiers who are already exhausted average age about 40 or above 40 and now they’re having to ration ammunition. Imagine you’re at the front line and in some places, the Russians are firing ten times more ammunition shells than the Ukrainians and so the Ukrainians are getting pummeled. There’s no way they can hold out and there’s one reason for this and only one because Russia’s turned to a war economy and by the way got more shells from North Korea than Ukraine has got from the entire EU.
There’s a figure for you and we’re just the West is just not sending them enough ammunition fast enough.
Alan:
For more of that interview, listen and follow the Prospect Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Lionel:
This is Media Confidential with Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber. On today’s episode, we’re discussing the startling numbers of journalists dying in Gaza, the vast majority of them Palestinians. AFP’s Global News Director Phil Chetwynd joins us. He has a team of reporters covering the conflict from Gaza. The Israeli army have told Agence France Presse, they cannot guarantee the security of their journalists in Gaza. Phil, hello. I’m very pleased that you’re joining us here. As the Global News Director, you’re in charge of the coverage of this war.
It’s a tremendously difficult war to cover. The death toll amongst journalists is unprecedented. Can you give us some sense of the guidance you’re giving to your operators on the ground, the people on the ground, for how to cover it to get to the truth but also bearing in mind you don’t want to take irresponsible risk or put lives in jeopardy?
Phil Chetwynd:
It’s been probably the hardest coverage I’ve managed in 20 years of managing big coverages. A combination I think of the story itself, the Israel-Palestinian story that really presses visceral emotions everywhere that others don’t. The social media context, the populist politics context, and also the situation on the ground. The brutal truth is there’s not a lot we can do for our team in Gaza. They have to make their own decisions and we try to support them as best they can but they are completely cut off from any kind of support that we can give them.
Which is not the same as previous Gaza conflicts where we’ve been able to send reporters from outside Gaza to reinforce, to work alongside them, to give them moral support. Here, they are really on their own. it’s been a horrendously frustrating experience to be so helpless in front of their situation. We can give them moral encouragement, but there’s very little practical advice we can give them.
Alan:
Phil, I think you’ve got eight people on the ground in Gaza, and can you give us some sense of the difficulties that they’re encountering in covering this incredibly bloody war?
Phil:
Yes, sure, Alan. I think from the beginning, the challenge was that the whole of northern Gaza was made into effectively a free-fire zone. The Israelis simply said, if you are in this zone, you are in danger. That is where our office was. The first thing we had to do was-- and that’s really where everybody lived as well, where all our staff lived. The first thing they had to do really on, I think, October 13, so a week after October 7, was to leave the safety of their homes, to leave the office, which in a sense was their second home, a place of safety, an international news agency based in Gaza for the life of a refugee internally in Gaza.
All while trying to cover what’s going on, and while having their families in tow. I think this is really important. The entire AFP group is actually about 60 to 70 people because there are husbands and uncles and aunts and children and so on. The daily battle is really to try to cover what’s going on, to stay alive, to find enough food and shelter for your extended family, and to react constantly to what’s going on, probably to have to move all the time. They have moved three or four different times as the threats and the bombing raids have intensified.
Probably the last time we’ve moved now, obviously, everybody is in Rafah, in three or four different locations. Some are in tents, some are in shared accommodation, living in very intense circumstances, 10 to a room. Having worked really non-stop for four months now. It’s really hard to imagine, and there’s just an incredible sense of astonishment and pride and marvel, really, that they can keep doing this day after day after day, seeing what they’re seeing and doing what they’re doing.
Lionel:
Phil, Agence France-Presse, we all know it as AFP, has a tremendous tradition of great war reporting. I remember going into journalism in the late ‘70s, reading about the war photographers in Vietnam, the frontline reporters, some of whom, as big as the famous American names. Do you think today, if you’re looking at a war correspondent on the ground, that having that banner Press on your back, is it a target or is there any security, some sort of insurance that you’re not going to be hit?
Phil:
Yes, it’s very interesting, Lionel. We’ve been having this conversation a lot through Ukraine and particularly Gaza and Lebanon. I think on balance, it makes people feel more like a target. I certainly think that’s what our people in Gaza feel. We had a very serious incident in southern Lebanon in which two of our journalists were badly injured and a Reuters correspondent was killed. That group of six journalists standing on a hill with a car marked “TV”, with two live television cameras going for one hour, with drones watching them for one hour.
When the tank rounds came in, which we traced to the Israeli side, they were very targeted. One hit a vehicle marked “TV” and the other hit directly the Reuters journalist standing on that hill. I cannot know what went through the mind of the person who fired that tank shell, but it really appeared as if they had become a target by standing out in that way and doing their job openly, very clearly openly. I think certainly our team in Gaza feel that. I think increasingly we’ve felt that in Ukraine, probably because of the way warfare has changed in particular and the use of drones, I think is a huge change now so that everybody has eyes on you.
Therefore you look like a great big target when your car is marked “TV” or when you’re standing with your flak jackets and so on. I think very sadly that is increasingly how many people feel now.
Alan:
Does that affect the correspondence attitude to communications? That even the act of speaking on a mobile phone may send out signals that draw incoming fire?
Phil:
Certainly. In particular, if we are to try to, if I go back to the South Lebanon incident, which is just so interesting because it’s rare that we have so much evidence of something so-- such a blatant attack on journalists. We don’t have that obvious evidence in Gaza, which we do in Lebanon. The only thing that we can think of is really the live TV signal . There was another incident where journalists in Southern Lebanon were targeted. Again, there was a live TV signal. There was journalists using technology, I suppose, to do their job, which was deemed to be a threat.
I think that really does start to change the way everybody has to work. Certainly, that’s the case in Ukraine that there’s a total paranoia, I think, wherever you are, that your signal or your phone or something you’re on is giving something away because above you is just a sea of drones following you, following the Ukrainian military, following anything on the ground and looking for targets.
Alan:
Phil, can I ask about the pushback that you must be aware of from the Israeli side, we were just talking to Jodie Ginsburg from the Committee to Protect Journalists, who are keeping a log of all the journalists who have died. The pushback that they’re getting is these people are not really journalists. We’ve looked at their social media feeds going back years, and they’re effectively supporters of Hamas, or they’re not neutral. Can you talk a bit about the journalists you’ve got, and their split loyalties, if you like, they’re Gazans, they’re Palestinians, they’re under fire, they’re in the middle of a war. How do you regard that dilemma?
Phil:
I think it’s been a very effective and disgraceful, I think, campaign of dehumanisation of Palestinian journalists, particularly by some pressure groups, notably, something called HonestReporting, which posed the question without any evidence, were Gazan journalists aware of the Hamas of October 7, before it happened. It was almost left to the journalists themselves to prove that they weren’t involved. That was exactly what we had to do for our team. Most of our team have worked for us for many years, they’re all staff. Some of them go back 30 years from before Gaza was run by Hamas.
Some of them have award-winning photographers, they’ve won some of the top prizes in photojournalism, World Press Awards, the Bayeux Award. They have been working with our teams in Gaza and outside Gaza, covering stories in the way that we cover stories. I think it’s really hard for them. Many are targeted openly, particularly on these social media campaigns. I was talking to our chief correspondent Adel Al Zaanoon in Gaza recently, and he made the point that it’s their job to be in touch with Hamas. Hamas has been ruling the Gaza Strip for 15-20 years.
Of course, you will have contacts with the people who are running the government of this entity. Of course, you will have links. We can certainly say for our team, that, they are journalists through and through who follow the rules of journalism and do their very best in extremely difficult circumstances, to in a sense, also have to prove that they are not something that they’re not. It’s very hard for them. There’s just only one other really odd point, which is the fact that Israeli intelligence is blocking all these journalists from leaving Gaza.
Our entire team are blacklisted for having links with Hamas, so they cannot get out, which is a counterintuitive thing. It almost seems like an Israeli punishment for Gazan journalists.
Lionel:
What links do they claim they have with Hamas?
Phil:
They don’t. I think ourselves, most international media, myself, the Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, we’ve all had a little WhatsApp group where we keep in touch. We’ve been trying to get our teams out for some time, just because they’re exhausted, frightened. Four months of this is incredibly traumatic. It has been clear for a long time, and I went to Israel, I met with the COGAT who run the Gaza Strip. We were told anyone with links to Hamas in their first circle of contacts, which is pretty vast for a journalist working in Gaza, is under suspicion and has been blocked from leaving Gaza.
That has been a double pain, really, that they can’t prove that they’re not Hamas. As a result, they’ve also been sentenced to be there and to continue to be under the bombs and under the assault and being unable to get to safety, which has been very hard.
Alan:
That’s a really important thing to get on with.
Lionel:
Very important. Now we need that on record. I did not know that.
Phil:
Yes, it’s a very counterintuitive thing, too, because we had assumed that if Israel allowed AFB, the Associated Press, the BBC, and Reuters to leave Gaza Strip, it would maybe be in their interest but that has not been the case.
Lionel:
Thank you so much, Phil. Good luck. Please send all our best to your correspondence.
Phil:
Yes, it was a real pleasure. Thank you.
Lionel:
Alan, listening to Phil Chetwynd, I thought, here is a man who’s really at the sharp end. Also, as Global News Director, he’s actually not capable of directing the journalists there. It’s really that they’re boxed in, they’re having to make decisions for themselves. As he said, at the end, they can’t even leave.
Alan:
I thought it was a very powerful and actually terrifying picture. These people with their families, 60 or 70 of them had to move four times, the very active communication could make them targets. They’re under constant bombardment themselves and their families. This additional, ugly attempt to smear them and say, they’re not really journalists, they’re not really neutral, they’ve got links with this that, what a terrible position.
Lionel:
The second insight that I gathered from Phil was the new nature of warfare and the role of drones. The important thing here is, of course, that it’s all being filmed. If you’re looking at, for example, the attack on the Reuters, AFP journalists in Lebanon in the hill, he described, it was all being watched. That does look like deliberate targeting, doesn’t it? Quite a powerful case there.
Alan:
It’s a new and frightening dimension to war corresponding. I’m sure you had the same dilemmas, Lionel, when you were editing. I remember, we had a journalist on the Guardian called Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who was always pressing to go into more and more dangerous situations. It was always a dilemma about whether, obviously, we wanted to be able to contact him and check he was safe. His pushback was, “If I take a mobile phone with me, I’m going to make myself a target.”
I think Marie Colvin was killed because the people would be able to locate her through her electronic communications. It’s a new and terrifying dimension to covering these kinds of conflicts.
Lionel:
Jodie Ginsburg made an important point about double standards here, that somehow, the Palestinian journalists in Gaza, for whatever reason, are not treated in the same category as Western journalists, and also not enough support from Western media.
Alan:
That was really powerful. The sense from both of them that, of course, if you live in Gaza, it’s very difficult not to have contact with Hamas. It’s very easy to smear any of them and say, “We’ve looked at their social media feed.” As Phil said, it is their job to be talking to Hamas. In a way, it’s good that they are. I remember speaking to Esther Solomon early on in our series, Lionel, you probably remember when-- and I said, “What are your contacts with Hamas?” She said, “We don’t have contacts with Hamas, and they’re not going to speak to us.”
Somebody has to speak to Hamas and work out what they’re thinking.
Lionel:
I suppose, lastly, the important work of CPJ is documentation. Even though they may not be getting a response from the Israeli government, as yet, regarding the treatment of journalists, the risks to journalists, the allegations of targeting of journalists, they hope in the end to have such a robust dossier, an accumulation of evidence that the historical record will show that these were not just casualties of war, but actually more than that. They were doing their job and lost their lives in the biggest death toll in any conflict to date.
Alan:
That’s it for this week. Thank you for listening to Media Confidential brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air. The producer is Danny Garlick.
Lionel:
Send questions or comments to mediaconfidential@prospectmagazine.co.uk or get in touch on X, formerly Twitter. We are @mediaconfpod.
Alan:
Remember to listen and follow Media Confidential wherever you get your podcasts. Join us next week for more analysis on what’s really happening in the world of media. Join us then.
