‘Worst possible thing’ is to ‘stop receiving news from the ground’ — Concerns over Palestinian journalists killed by Israel

19 August, 2025

Interviews by Oto Sequeira and Caeden Tipler, adapted by Sara Mckoy 

Mount Royal University’s Gabriela Perdomo Páez and the E Tū Union’s Tom Hunt reiterate calls for people to observe the larger threat to crucial reporting on the ground in Gaza, as almost 270 media workers have been killed by Israel since October 2023.

Since violence broke out between Hamas and Israeli forces in October 2023, almost 270 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza by Israel, making this ongoing war the deadliest in history to those working in the industry, according to findings from the Costs of War Project.

Most recently, an airstrike by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) on a media tent killed four Al Jazeera journalists.

These recent deaths have resulted in further calls for urgent international action to ensure the protection of journalists reporting in war zones, and to hold Israel to account.

A journalist from the E Tū National Delegate Committee, Tom Hunt, told 95bFM’s The Wire that the endangerment of media coverage is extremely worrying for the reportage in Gaza. 

“The problem we've got with anything inside Gaza right now is that you can't get media in there apart from the people who have been killed [trying] to actually report on from the ground.”

Assistant Professor in Journalism at Mount Royal University, Gabriela Perdomo Páez, told 95bFM’s International Desk, that the latest media casualties represented an “attack on journalism”. 

“This is not just an attack on the individual lives of these men and women who have been killed atrociously by Israel's army; it is absolutely an attack on press freedom; on our own rights to know what is happening on the ground in Gaza.”

She says the role of journalists “bearing witness” to the atrocities taking place against Palestinians has been undermined by international complacency in responding to Israel’s war crimes. 

“The fact that [Israel is] a legitimately recognised country, a democracy, in the way that we understand democracies to be like a country, and [having] its own legitimate forces carrying out attacks against journalists; that is something that should worry all of us everywhere”.

As politicians deliberate on New Zealand’s official stance on Palestinian statehood and holding Israel to account, both Hunt and Páez emphasise the centrality of journalism in the coverage of such global conflicts.

In her prior interview on International Desk, Páez talks about her research into how oversimplified expectations of neutrality disempower media reporting on the perpetration of violence against civilians. 

She says that news organisations have been deterred from reporting on the events in Gaza out of fear of being labelled as "biased". 

“The problem with that adherence to objectivity is that you are either weaponising it or misunderstanding it, and it's really not serving us and our newsrooms at all right now.

“Are you saying that we should discount what those journalists are suffering or what they're saying just because they are actually living that?”

She uses the example of media coverage surrounding the murder of George Floyd in the US in 2020 to further illustrate how “accusations of liberal bias” are employed to undermine journalism on certain topics.

“Black journalists in the US were being told that they could not objectively cover the protests that followed because they thought that they were too invested in the story… which is completely insane.

“The same insanity is happening right now.”

Páez says that the consequence of this for reporting on Gaza is both the underwhelming amount of coverage and the intentional choice of passive language when it is reported on.

“Still today, you see many headlines in many mainstream news organisations saying Gaza is facing a famine — as if the famine was something that is happening spontaneously, or as a factor in something else. 

“So we see that kind of very, very clear and stark double standard, and we really need to ask ourselves, why?”

As journalists on the ground in Gaza continue to undertake the potentially fatal risks of reporting on Israel’s war on the besieged enclave, Páez says it is the responsibility of the international community to pay attention, advocate for the protection of journalists, and continue to pressure governments to react.

“I think we owe it to all these journalists to go back and see [and read] their reports, listen to the stories that they were trying to tell us, and watch their videos, because they were putting themselves on the line so that we understand deeply and truthfully what was happening…

“The people in Gaza are not okay, and the worst possible thing that can happen is that we are going to stop receiving news on the ground.”

Listen to the interview with Tom Hunt

Listen to the interview with Gabriela Perdomo Páez on the killing of journalists in Gaza

Listen to the interview with Gabriela Perdomo Páez on research about media coverage in Gaza