CPJ: Measuring the impact of the Gaza war even more difficult after the death of journalists

It has become “even more difficult”, and in some cases even “impossible”, for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) to measure the impact of the Gaza war. The interest group writes this in a report published on Monday. It states, among other things, that CPJ is still trying to find out what happened to four people, possibly journalists, during Israel’s siege of the Al Shifa hospital.

Access to information from the enclave is said to have decreased significantly since the start of the conflict, according to program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “At the beginning of the war, it still took us a day or two to verify information about whether a journalist had been killed or wounded. Now collecting and checking that data takes weeks or months and in some cases it is not possible at all.”

Researcher Mohamed Mandour, who studies the Middle East and North Africa, also endorses this concern. “Every bit of information we don’t have access to means it becomes even harder for the world to understand what is happening in Gaza, how it has affected journalists and media workers and who is responsible for it.” Which immediately led to a clouded image of the Gaza war, says Mandour. “Imagine the amount of reporting we would have had if almost 100 journalists had not been killed.”

According to the latest CPJ counts, the death toll among journalists as a result of (rocket) attacks by the Israeli army has now risen to 97. Among them, 92 are said to be Palestinians.

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