Major agencies failed to attend Gazan protests

Photojournalists working for Reuters and AP in Gaza are usually very quick and efficient.

They reach the sites of Israeli air strikes or the morgues of local hospitals within minutes. Some of them don’t hesitate to cross borders and film atrocities, as they did on October 7, 2023.

Yet late afternoon on Tuesday (March 25), when hundreds of Gazans took to the streets in what appeared to be the largest protest against Hamas since its attack on Israel, Reuters and AP crews were absent — more potential proof that these so-called “journalists” are beholden to or cooperating with the terror group.

 

 

The first story and video about the protest on the Reuters platform appeared only the next morning, based on social media posts. Several still images by an unidentified stringer went up past noon on Wednesday.

On AP’s database, no visuals of the protest were published, and one text story based on “videos circulating online” appeared mid-morning on Wednesday.

As shown on social media, hundreds of defiant Gazans chanted “Hamas are terrorists,” in what seemed to be an organized and pre-planned demonstration.

Yet both agencies’ text stories were selective in the slogans they quoted from the protest: “Hamas out” and “We refuse to die” were mentioned, but not “Hamas are terrorists.”

And so news organizations that rely on Reuters and AP for Gaza coverage, and pay big bucks for it, had nothing solid to work with. Outlets like The New York Times, BBC News, CNN, The Guardian, and others had to use posts from X (formerly Twitter) as sources because the world’s largest news agencies suddenly went AWOL.

A Gazan who filmed the protest said on X that BBC and Al Jazeera refused to air his video because it showed Gazans “furious at Hamas terrorists using their hospitals as shields.” Presumably, someone at the wire services had similar thoughts that harmed the agencies’ timely and objective coverage.