Gaza City Encircled and Ethics in Journalism
The Week of November 5-11
Quick Hits
As of last Monday, November 6th, the North and South of the Gaza Strip were cut in two. Gaza City was surrounded. Their progress has been slow and deliberate, sending teams of combat engineers who scan and sweep for signs of tunnels and munitions—one of which they found under a child bed.
With Hamas unable to control the civilian population, tens of thousands were able to evacuate the city. The IDF has announced daily humanitarian corridors to facilitate the safe evacuation of Gazan civilians.
An HonestReporting news report documents and raises questions about the level of foreknowledge and participation freelance journalists and photographers working with the New York Times, CNN, and AP had of the October 7th massacre. I’ll discuss some of the broader implications and complexities below.
“Pro-Palestinian” protests continue around the world, calling for violence against Jews and several turning violent, disrupting roads, intimidating law enforcement officers, and menacing Jewish populations.
Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu says that the IDF will remain in control of “overall security responsibility” over the Gaza Strip for an indefinite period of time. Mahmoud Abbas reiterated on Friday that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is ready to retake control of Gaza as part of a comprehensive political solution along the 1967 Broders.
A Closer Look
Northern Gaza Evacuates as IDF closes in on Hamas Stronghold.
Last week, we discussed the reports that Hamas was demanding its citizens to ignore the IDF’s evacuation orders and even shooting at its citizens who were attempting to flee to safety as well as a new instance from this week here. One Gazan woman speaks about it in this clip. Israel has announced that they will be facilitating a daily 4-hour evacuation, neighborhood by neighborhood, where residents will have three hours’ notice before the window begins. Tens of thousands have taken them up on this offer, leaving south Gaza in desperate need of humanitarian supplies. Some Gazans are choosing to collect supplies and relocate temporarily amid fears of starvation, loss of property, or even reprisal in the south of Gaza. Once again, we are seeing the desperate situation Gazan citizens face because of the actions of their government, Hamas, as well as Hamas’s utter lack of care for the well being of the people under its rule.
The IDF has long documented Hamas’s warcrime of operating from hospitals, schools, and mosques. It has long been know that the Al Shifa hospital is a headquarters of sorts for Hamas’s military operations. IDF forces are steadily advancing towards the hospital in order to disable its military capabilities and assets therein. Such a move places doctors and patients in the hospital at great risk alongside the sevaral thousand people whom Hamas officials claim are sheltering there, leading to many in the international community to oppose the IDF’s actions. The IDF have called for an evacuation of the Al Shifa as their forces close in.
Media Companies Paying October 7th Terrorists?
Honest Reporting released a detailed analysis of videos and photos taken by Gazan “reporters” who provided photographs and videos of the October 7th attacks as well as other reports and photos throughout the subsequent war. It raises some serious ethical questions alongside some practical ones as well so let’s take a look.
It is now clear that October 7th had been planned for months if not years in advance, with a high degree of sophisticated training and support from Iran. Forces assembled in the early hours of the morning on October 7th to set off on their murderous campaign and somehow reporters contracted by outlets such as CNN, AP, and Reuters as “Stringers” just so happened to be at these events and rode along with the Hamas terrorist to commit their atrocities. Now, this does not mean that these media outlets had foreknowledge of these attacks, but it does mean that people they pay in Gaza for reporting, information, and access are not only connected with the terrorist group Hamas but might be terrorists themselves.
Before we can go any further, we need to understand what a “stringer” is and how they work in the news business. A stringer is essentially an independent contractor that a news outlet regularly hires in a region to help cover news events. News outlets are attempting to cover breaking news stories from around the world—in order to get access to people and knowledge of the local environments they need to have connected local people on the payroll who can get them access to the people, pictures, and information they need. This is relatively easy in wesetern democracies where people generally believe in the freedom of the press and the neccecity to allow journalists to operate and inform the public in a (hopefully) dispassionate manner. It gets much trickier in places like Gaza or Russia where authoritarian regimes demand a vice grip on information and have no compumctions of imprisoning or even executing those who report inconvient facts.
So, the media outlets have a choice, deal with morally compromised persons who can get them access to ‘some infomration’ or report only in places where their journalists can be protected and operate with freedom. It is a genuinely difficult position for media outlets and has been for a very long time.1 Complicating the matter still is that Israel has vowed to treat all of the participants in the October 7th massacres as terrorists to be brought to justice and see these actors (particularly the one videoed with a hand grenade) as a participant and not a journalist.
In response to the report CNN has terminated the association with its stringer who was implicated while The New York times has vehimetnly denied the accusations made against its own man (not the one with the hand grenade) and suggested that raising such questions is dangerous and a disservice to the public interest.
Ultimately, this is a story to keep an eye on—we do not know the extent of the connection and involvement of these stringers. But, we must recognize that they have deep connections with Hamas and thus the information they provide is, at a minimum, permissible to Hamas officials who are almost certainly keeping an eye on their work.
Closing Item
Next Tuesday I will be attending the March for Israel on November 14th in Washington D.C. The March’s aims are to demand the release of the 240 hostages as well as demanding the US government to combat Antisemitism here in the United States. I wholeheartedly endorse both of these aims and so will be proud to stand alongside my Jewish neighbors. I thought it necessary to disclose this to you all as I am covering news stories. You should know my positions and my political activity. I stated my priors here in my first newsletter.
I hope to present facts as best as I can and cover stories that are relevant regardless of if they support my preconceived narratives. But, you the reader have a right to know where I am coming from.
Till Next Week,
Zachary McCartney
You can hear some exerpts of a serious moral conversation about the ethics of embedded reporters from the 2000s here.
I hope that you and all of those who March in Washington will be safe.