New Delhi: France’s La Croix and L’Humanité, United States’ The Intercept and NPR, Scotland’s The National, Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau, Nepal’s Himalkhabar, Spain’s La Vanguardia and La Sexta (TV), Mexico’s Proceso, Egypt’s Mada Masr, Qatar’s Al-Jazeera —at least 266 global news outlets across radio, broadcast, print and digital platforms this week registered their protest against the killing of journalists in Gaza, calling on Israel to give the international press safe access to the strip amid the war.
Some print publications ran blank or blacked-out front pages, or photos of Palestinian journalists, including those who have been killed so far. Many digital outlets changed their homepage or carried a banner with a common message: ‘At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed.’
Ryan Grim, co-founder and editor of Drop Site, an American online news outlet which also registered its protest as part of the campaign, told ThePrint, “Reporters in Gaza are the eyes and ears of the world. It’s incumbent on us all to stand up for their right to work safely.”
German daily Die Tageszeitung displayed a photo of Malak A. Tantesh, a Palestinian reporter based in Gaza, and reporting for The Guardian and Der Spiegel, across three-quarters of its front page. The rest of the page carried an editorial.
As media worldwide demand free access & protection for journalists in #Gaza, I explain why it is right for international and local media in war zones ro collaborate and stand up for each other. Editorial here and on today's TAZ @tazgezwitscher front pagehttps://t.co/hD7F658ziu pic.twitter.com/jkLCqhvKDy
— Dominic Johnson (@kongoecho) September 1, 2025
Lois Kapila, deputy editor at the Dublin Inquirer, an Irish publication participating in the protest, told ThePrint, “A staggering 220 journalists have been killed by the army in the Gaza Strip in less than 23 months… While it is still too late for so many, they (governments across the world) need to act now.”
The media protest was jointly coordinated by RSF, global campaigning movement Avaaz, and the International Federation of Journalists.
The Guardian, meanwhile, carried a half-page story on journalists in Gaza on the front page on 1 September, using photos of the journalists prominently, but it wasn’t listed in the campaign. ThePrint reached The Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner for comment. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
The media protest comes in the backdrop of the 25 August “double-tap” airstrikes on the al-Nasser medical complex in central Gaza—a part of which reporters used for working—killing five journalists, including those reporting for Reuters and Associated Press. On the night of 10 August, another strike on a press tent in Gaza City had killed six reporters, including Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif. Anas, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, had been receiving death threats for some time.
France-based Reporters Without Borders, or Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), puts the number of reporters killed in Gaza by the Israeli army since the beginning of the war in October 2023 at more than 200, with at least 42 of them “likely killed due to their work”. “Some of the media organisations, after internal discussions, decided that they wanted to focus on coverage and reportage, rather than join the campaign,” Campaign Director at Avaaz, Andrew Legon, said.
Jonathan Dagher, head of the Middle East desk at RSF, told ThePrint, “Journalists around the world are aware of the gravity of the situation, and standing in solidarity with their colleagues in Gaza.”
The Israel Foreign Ministry responded to the protest Monday, calling it a “uniform, pre-scripted political manifesto against Israel—that tells you how great the bias against Israel is in the global media”.
“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. This is not journalism. This is politics,” read its statement on X.
When 150 media outlets choose in a synchronized manner to stop reporting news, to throw values of the press and plurality of opinions into the trash, and instead publish a uniform, pre-scripted political manifesto against Israel – that tells you how great the bias against Israel… pic.twitter.com/TqLlyREudN
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) September 1, 2025
How news outlets protested
Media organisations from nearly 40 countries participated in the protest, from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina, among others.
French daily L’Orient–Le Jour had a blackened front page. British newspaper The Independent kept Page 1 white and mostly blank, but kept the common message front and centre. Dutch daily De Volkskrant carried photos of slain Palestinian journalists, along with the note on its front page, dedicating multiple pages to articles on the journalists.
American news website The Markaz Review carried a centerpiece message—‘The Markaz Review Joins Reporters Without Borders and Avaaz in Protesting Israel’s Killing of Palestinian Journalists’—along with links to other stories on Gaza. Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo carried the common message on a broad, black banner on its homepage.
Irish website Dublin Inquirer carried the message on a banner strip on its homepage. On its website, The Journal from Ireland wrote the missive in black square boxes, with an editorial below it that read, “Israel must abide by its international obligations to protect journalists”.
Sinéad O’Carroll, editor of The Journal, told ThePrint, “Benjamin Netanyahu’s government does not want the world to see what his army is doing in Gaza. His war on the Palestinian people is also a war on truth. We want our colleagues in Gaza to be able to report what is happening to their country safely. We want, with our international colleagues, to be able to travel there and report back to Irish audiences safely.”
The protest “was overdue”, said RSF’s Dagher, adding that “it did not begin today; in June, nearly 200 media outlets had joined us at the CPJ to call for international press access to Gaza”.
He said the protest comes with four demands—“Stop the massacre of journalists in Gaza. End the impunity with which the Israeli army is killing journalists in Gaza. Lift the media blockade and grant access to international journalists. Finally, we are calling on countries to accommodate and give refuge to Gazan journalists, so they can recuperate, and hopefully, be able to go back home.”
Commenting on the coverage of the war in Gaza, Avaaz’s Legon said, “I think media outlets are covering Gaza, but for 23 months, international journalists haven’t been able to go into Gaza, making it difficult. It is the Palestinian journalists who, without getting the resources, are putting their lives on the line.”
Legon said that since journalistic objectivity and activism are in perpetual conflict, and accountability is crucial for media outlets, it is not easy to organise such protests, but sometimes, they are necessary.
On journalistic objectivity, Dagher said, “I don’t think that standing up to say that journalists should not be killed is in any way a compromise.”
The Quint and The Wire from India also participated in the protest. Shelly Walia, executive editor of The Quint, which also marked the protest through its website, said: “We must speak out against the deplorable killing of journalists in Gaza in one voice. These attacks are deliberate—when journalists are targeted, it is not only their lives that are destroyed, but also the flow of independent, verifiable information from the affected region.”
Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, in a statement, said: “…Those who continue to report from the occupied territory do so at immense risk and while facing personal tragedies… By targetting journalists reporting from Gaza and banning access to foreign media, the Israeli government is trying to create an information blackout.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)