DUBAI — More than 250 news outlets around the world have signed an appeal that calls for the protection of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, for foreign press to be granted independent access to the territory and for the evacuation of wounded journalists in Gaza needing medical treatment abroad. NPR is among the media outlets that signed.
The appeal, organized by Reporters Without Borders and Avaaz, notes that at least 220 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza in under two years of war. Media watchdogs and historians note this marks the deadliest period of war for journalists ever recorded, globally. Palestinians count 247 journalists killed.
Israel's Foreign Ministry called the appeal a "political manifesto against Israel" that it said shows how great global media bias is.
"The reports we see in the global media regarding Gaza do not tell the real story there. They tell the campaign of lies that Hamas spreads," the ministry said in a statement.
A study by Brown University in April found that Israeli attacks in Gaza since the war began in October 2023 have killed more journalists there than the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says "Israel is engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented." Israeli attacks have also killed dozens of relatives of prominent journalists reporting in Gaza.
Media outlets call for press protections
The Sept. 1, 2025 appeal also calls for action from the international community and from the United Nations Security Council ahead of the upcoming General Assembly to put a stop to Israel's killing of journalists in Gaza.
A similar petition signed in June by the editors-in-chiefs of major news organizations, including NPR, CNN, Reuters, the AP and others, noted that the risks to journalists in Gaza are "a direct attack on press freedom and the right to information." They said Israel's ban on independent access to Gaza is without precedent in modern warfare. The only way to access Gaza throughout the war as a foreign journalist has been to be embedded with Israel's military with military spokespeople as escorts.
Israel's military has acknowledged some of its attacks on journalists in Gaza, saying the individuals were affiliated with Hamas or other militant groups.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says the military has not provided credible evidence for its allegations and has called on Israel to "to stop making unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of members of the press."
In one such example, noted by CPJ, Israel's military killed 27-year-old Al-Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami Al Refee last year in an airstrike on their car that severed al-Ghoul's head from his body. The Israeli military then published a document it says shows al-Ghoul received a Hamas military ranking in 2007, but CPJ notes he would have only been 10 years-old at the time.
Still, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer insists some of the journalists killed in Gaza are militants.
" Of course journalism is a noble profession, but many journalists who have reported from Gaza, so-called journalists, are simply terrorists with a press vest on," Mencer said in a briefing to international press last week.
August marks deadliest month on record ever
Israel's lethal attacks on Palestinian journalists in Gaza have only intensified in recent weeks. Palestinian journalists have named 15 of their colleagues they say were killed in Gaza in August alone.
The latest major attack was Aug. 25, when an Israeli strike hit Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri during a live transmission from the open stairwell of a hospital, killing him on the spot. Israeli forces struck that same stairwell minutes later again, killing medics, first responders and four more journalists working for international media, including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.
An initial finding by the military said troops targeted a camera positioned by Hamas, but the military provided no evidence and did not respond to further NPR questions. The military also said six militants were killed in the attack, but did not say if they were the intended target nor answer further questions.
The editors-in-chief of Reuters and the AP wrote a letter to Israeli leaders saying that although the military says it does not target journalists in Gaza, they have found the military's "willingness and ability to investigate itself in past incidents to rarely result in clarity and action." They said this raises serious questions about whether Israel is deliberately targeting the media to suppress information in Gaza.
Two weeks before the Aug. 25 attack, on Aug. 11, six journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a press tent outside one of Gaza's main hospitals.
Israel's military said it was targeting Anas al-Sharif, Gaza's most well-known television reporter, who was killed while wearing a blue "PRESS" vest. The 28-year-old was Al Jazeera's correspondent in the north and had a massive online following. Before his death, he had denied Israeli allegations of affiliation with Hamas' military wing, and continued reporting despite the risks to his life. Early in the war, his home was bombed by Israeli forces and his father was killed.
That Aug. 11 attack took out Al Jazeera's crew in Gaza City just as Israel's military pushed ahead with a lethal offensive to forcibly displace the entire population south and fully occupy the city, where nearly a million people still reside. Israel's government says the offensive is aimed at eradicating Hamas, which still holds Israeli hostages. Influential Israeli ministers, however, are also pressing for Israel to annex parts of Gaza, build Jewish settlements there and displace Palestinians outside the territory, a plan they refer to as "voluntary migration."
What Palestinian journalists face in Gaza today
A typical day for a journalist in Gaza could begin by walking on foot to the nearest hospital morgue to count the dead from Israeli airstrikes — diesel is too expensive and not being allowed into Gaza at scale by Israel.
Journalists in Gaza do this work while also searching for food and drinking water for their families, and while searching for charging stations for their phones and for an internet connection to upload their material to editors for the world to see. They might then rush to the scene of an Israeli airstrike or funeral.
Salem al-Rayes, a journalist in Gaza for Arabic language news sites, was displaced from his home during the war, giving up most of his personal belongings, like other Palestinians in Gaza.
He told NPR many in Gaza fear the presence of journalists like him in their blue "PRESS" vests, afraid that the journalists will be targeted in attacks that kill those near them.
He says that while he's motivated to keep reporting on the realities of people in Gaza under war, he endures the dangers of reporting mostly in order to earn an income and afford the high cost of food and rent now.
"Honestly, we reached a level that we don't have another choice," al-Rayes said.
Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv and Ahmed Abu Hamda in Cairo contributed to this report.
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