U.S. corporate media has given Israeli military commanders the right to review before publication “all material and footage” taken by their correspondents with the Israeli forces during the invasion of Gaza, a requirement condemned by press freedom advocates.
“Journalists stationed with the IDF in Gaza operate under the supervision of Israeli commanders on the ground and are not allowed to move around the Gaza Strip unaccompanied,” said Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN“Fareed Zakaria GPS” explained in a segment on Sunday.
“As a condition of entering the Gaza Strip under IDF escort, the media must submit all materials and footage to the Israeli military for review before publication,” he added. “CNN has agreed to these terms in order to provide limited insight into Israel’s operations in Gaza.”
In a clip with correspondent Raf Sanchez – who is part of an IDF unit tasked with finding and destroying Hamas tunnels in Gaza –NBC News also admitted that it had agreed “to transfer raw materials” as an “operational security requirement.”
US journalist Dan Cohen reacted to Zakaria’s admission claims The “CNN explicitly acts as a propaganda mouthpiece for the genocidal Zionist regime.”
US photojournalist Zach D. Roberts said on social media the “what CNN Here he creates B-roll ads for the IDF. It’s nothing like news and stuff like that CNN Employees who took part are by no means journalists.”
Omar Suleiman, founder and president of the Texas-based Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, said Sunday on social media: “Israel kills the journalists who expose their crimes and then bribes the journalists who report for them.”
Israel does not allow foreign journalists into the Gaza Strip unless they are embedded in IDF units under the conditions set out above, thereby placing almost all the responsibility – and danger – of reporting on Palestinian correspondents.
As Shared dreamsAs reported on Friday, at least 31 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since Israel began bombing the densely populated strip in response to the October 7 Hamas-led attacks that killed more than 1,400 Israelis and others in southern Israel as well About 240 more people died and were taken hostage.
A Lebanese journalist was also killed in Gaza, while four Israeli media workers were killed in the Hamas attacks.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, last month was the deadliest four-week period for media workers since the U.S.-based group began keeping records in 1992. CPJ also documented at least eight injuries, three missing people, eight arrests. and “multiple attacks, threats, cyberattacks, censorship and killings of family members.”
Suleiman said the world can expect “more coverage that humanizes IDF soldiers as they cold-bloodedly murder thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians.”
The Palestinian Health Ministry said on Monday that Israeli forces had killed at least 10,022 people, including 2,550 women and more than 4,100 children, and injured over 25,000 others in Gaza.
During the eight-year U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, embedded journalists were used by American officials to control the public narrative of the war. Research has shown that embedding “led reporters to produce war coverage from the soldier’s perspective” while minimizing civilian casualties and other negative consequences.
The USA and other Western mainstream media have long been accused of biased reporting in favor of Israel. During the current war, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and other media observers have found that numerous media outlets have carried unconfirmed Israeli and U.S. claims about Hamas beheadings of babies or about Gaza-based militants operational among hospitals, that Hamas is using human shields and other unsubstantiated reports.
Lara Witt and Tina Vásquez from Prism Reports recently wrote that the US media is “shirking its responsibility to recognize the genocide in Gaza.”
“The American media is failing,” they wrote. “Through journalistic sleight of hand—including the use of passive language, ever-changing headlines, reciprocity, and the myth of objectivity—reporters across the United States are fomenting the genocide that their newsrooms refuse to acknowledge,” Witt and Vásquez added.
Source : www.commondreams.org