26 Sep 2025 | Bulgaria, Europe and Central Asia, News and features, SLAPPs, Statements
Media freedom in Bulgaria faces entrenched challenges in a climate of political polarisation and legislative inertia, with urgent action needed by government and public authorities to push forward both domestic and EU-mandated reforms, a coalition of international press freedom organisations said today.
Following a three-day mission to Sofia between 24 and 26 September, the delegation concluded that progress is needed to prevent and prosecute attacks on journalists, resolve the ongoing dispute over the leadership of the public broadcaster, guarantee the independence of the Council for Electronic Media (CEM) and pass anti-SLAPP legislation. Despite the important work of key journalist associations, there is a low level of solidarity within the journalistic profession.
The mission, organised by the Council of Europe’s Safety of Journalists Platform and the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), also found that Bulgaria is lagging behind in implementing the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), in force since August this year. A government working group has been suspended, with no indication of when discussions involving all relevant authorities and stakeholders will resume.
The mission did not have the opportunity to discuss the issue with the body in charge of media policies, the Ministry of Culture, since it was the only relevant public authority which refused to meet the delegation, despite repeated requests.
Following the mission, the partner organisations jointly call for greater political will and cross-party support to address deepening institutional paralysis and drive forward much needed reforms under the EMFA, which if properly implemented will help safeguard media freedom, pluralism and independence.
Safety of journalists
Though serious physical attacks on reporters and media workers in Bulgaria remain relatively uncommon, some media stakeholders told the mission that general hostility against the journalistic profession had increased in recent years. The mission called on the authorities to promptly investigate several assaults against media workers recorded on the Safety of Journalists Platform and bring those responsible to justice. Political pressures including intimidation and insults against journalists by politicians remain a cause of concern, even though direct political pressures on journalists have lessened compared to previous years.
The Council of Europe’s Platform for the Safety of Journalists currently has 34 active alerts involving attacks on journalists or threats against media freedom. Physical attacks account for one third of the cases, although their number has also dropped compared to previous years. Threats, including death threats, against journalists remain a serious concern but are too rarely sanctioned by authorities.
The mission notes the low levels of trust by journalists in the law enforcement authorities and prosecutors to secure justice in cases of attacks. Previous cases involving attacks on journalists by police have suffered from delayed justice. Certain stakeholders raised ongoing concerns about politicised investigations by prosecutorial authorities against the media. The mission welcomes the support of the Chief Prosecutor’s Office and the President for proposals to monitor and record serious cases and strengthen provisions within the criminal code to introduce higher sanctions for those convicted of attacking journalists.
The Council for Electronic Media and the public broadcaster
The mission concludes that the ongoing dispute between the Director General of the Bulgarian National Television and the CEM risks undermining public trust in the public broadcaster and the regulator’s appointment process. Two elections by the CEM have failed to reach a majority on appointing a new director general, with the incumbent continuing in the role three years past his original mandate, as pointed out by the European Commission’s 2025 Rule of Law Report.
A judicial review into the process is ongoing and a new attempt to appoint a director general is scheduled to take place on 16 October. The mission organisations call for the process to appoint a new director general of BNT to be conducted in a fair and transparent manner and for parties involved to act in accordance with the law.
The mission also heard criticism from some stakeholders about the editorial independence of BNT, reflecting concerns raised in the EU Rule of Law Report and the Media Pluralism Monitor. It is essential that EMFA-mandated reforms are implemented to strengthen the broadcaster’s editorial independence, which must be also guaranteed by adequate, sustainable and predictable financial resources.
The delegation concludes that reforms are required to both insulate CEM from political influence and bolster its operational resources. Multiple stakeholders noted perceived political affiliations of certain council members. The mission supports legislative proposals for reforms to strengthen the independence of all future candidates, in line with the provisions of the EMFA.
However, changes to the makeup or election process for the CEM must be conducted under the principles of independence, legality and pluralism. The healthy functioning of the CEM is vital for the effective regulation of the media ecosystem in Bulgaria. The regulator also requires greater operational resources to carry out its expanded mandate. Proposals to merge the CEM with other regulatory bodies risks disrupting its mandate and weakening its regulatory powers.
Legal threats, SLAPPs and defamation
The legal environment in Bulgaria creates persistent risks for journalists. According to journalists the mission met, there are dozens of active strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) targeted at media and journalists. Investigative journalists and those probing crime and corruption are among the most targeted by SLAPPs, with major businesses and insurance companies, politicians, and judges among the most common plaintiffs. Many of these cases involve extortionate demands for financial compensation.
The mission welcomes the preparations by the Ministry of Justice for the transposition of the 2024 Anti-SLAPP Directive. However, the organisations also express concern that the focus appears to be solely on the implementation of the EU Directive without equal attention to the Council of Europe Recommendation on SLAPPs. A key concern is that criminal defamation remains a legal tool in Bulgaria and politicians missed the opportunity to fully decriminalise defamation during recent criminal code changes.
Recent amendments lowered the minimum fines for insult and defamation and eliminated the automatic aggravated qualification when the person concerned is a civil servant. The reforms also introduced the possibility of waiving criminal liability and replacing it with administrative sanctions in cases concerning insult or defamation of state officials acting in their official capacity. Nevertheless, the continued criminalisation of defamation remains inconsistent with international freedom of expression standards and continues to allow the strategic use of criminal law against the media and journalists.
Legislation, pluralism and media capture
Repeated cycles of elections and the subsequent disruption of government working groups have resulted in delays to reforms that are badly needed to bring about a healthy media ecosystem in Bulgaria. Though initial work was done to prepare for the implementation of the EMFA, which came into full force in August 2025, the mission learnt that the Ministry of Culture has suspended the process.
Implementation of the EMFA is vital for addressing many of the systemic challenges facing media freedom and pluralism in Bulgaria. The mission concluded that the country suffers from some levels of media capture, with the non-transparency of media ownership, particularly anonymous online media, and the non-transparency of state advertising among most acute concerns. At the local and regional level, the economic dependence of media on advertising from local authorities has exposed them to financial pressures and in many cases weakened editorial independence.
Media pluralism in Bulgaria remains limited and independent journalism faces pressures from many sides, including ownership interference, self-censorship, threats to economic viability of watchdog journalism, and lingering concerns over the independence of major television broadcasters. Though Bulgaria has professional investigative journalists probing crime and corruption, they work in a climate of pressure, including death threats, harassment and vexatious lawsuits.
The legislative climate for access to information is inadequate and continues to face challenges, with journalists facing obstructions stemming from a general culture of opacity from state bodies. Requests for interviews with political leaders are routinely rejected and Freedom of Information (FOI) requests are often either ignored or partially answered. Parliamentary reporters continue to face disproportionate limits on their movement within the new parliament building, limiting scrutiny.
The precarious working conditions of many journalists in Bulgaria, including low pay and weak labour protections, pose further challenges for the profession, undermining the ability of media workers to oppose threats to editorial independence in their newsrooms.
Institutional and regulatory dysfunction, problematic media ownership and political influence have combined to weaken public trust in journalism in Bulgaria, with the country ranking among the lowest in Europe for trust in news, and among the highest levels of news avoidance.
This has created a vacuum in which disinformation can more easily spread, particularly on social media. Despite this clear threat, the government has failed to create a national disinformation strategy, with the work of the multi-stakeholder Bulgarian Coalition Against Disinformation remaining frozen since 2023. It is vital that Bulgaria swiftly designate and empower a national Digital Services Coordinator (DSC) and establish rules for penalties under the Digital Services Act(DSA).
Following the mission, the partner organisation call on the European Commission to closely observe the implementation of the EMFA in Bulgaria, provide concrete and measurable recommendations within the Rule of Law Report, deepen conditionality on EU funds, and to use all tools available to ensure compliance with the EMFA, the anti-SLAPP directive and other European standards, such as the Digital Services Act.
Recommendations
The mission outlines the following recommendations to improve the situation for media freedom in Bulgaria. More detailed recommendations will be provided in the full report to follow.
Safety of journalists
● Government and political authorities should refrain from and condemn all cases of denigration, vilification, intimidation and threats against journalists, including online attacks
● The Bulgarian government should join the
Safety of Journalists Campaign, establish contact points for journalists in law enforcement and ministerial bodies, and improve horizontal collaboration between ministries on the safety of journalists.
● Review and improve legislation to strengthen the criminal code with stronger sanctions for those convicted of attacking journalists and create a system for specifically recognising and categorising cases of attacks on the press and media workers.
● The Bulgarian government should encourage the establishment of, and support the operation of, early-warning and rapid-response mechanisms, such as hotlines, online platforms or 24-hour emergency contact points, by journalists’ organisations or civil society, to ensure that journalists and other media actors have immediate access to protective measures when they are threatened.
CEM and public broadcasters
● The process by CEM to appoint a new Director General of BNT must be conducted in a fair and transparent manner and all parties involved must act in accordance with the law.
● The government should implement reforms in line with the EMFA which strengthen the safeguards for editorial and institutional independence of BNT and BNR while also guaranteeing adequate, sustainable and predictable financial resources to both broadcasters.
● The government should implement reforms in line with the EMFA which insulate the Council for Electronic Media from political influence and interference and strengthen its functional independence, while also providing it with sufficient resources for operational stability.
Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs)
● The Ministry of Justice should transpose and implement both the EU Directive and the Council of Europe (CoE) Recommendation against SLAPPs, to ensure that both cross-border and domestic SLAPPs are effectively addressed.
● The government should ensure that the indicators for identifying SLAPPs, as foreseen in the CoE Recommendation, are incorporated into national law to assist judges in recognizing such cases. During the drafting process, the Ministry of Justice should make use of the expertise available from the CoE.
● Authorities should continue to train judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and police officers on European standards related to media freedom, including defamation, SLAPPs, hate speech, access to information, and the protection of whistleblowers and journalistic sources. This is essential to ensure that court rulings and practices align with the standards of the European Court of Human Rights.
● The government and the parliament of Bulgaria should fully decriminalise defamation.
Media legislation and EMFA
● The government should swiftly implement and align domestic legislation with the European Media Freedom Act under a transparent and inclusive process.
● In addition to reforms to the public service media and media regulators outlined above, the government should implement reforms mandated under the EMFA which require the establishment of a media ownership registry, which must be transparent, functional, up-to-date and easily accessible for journalists and citizens.
● The government should implement reforms outlined in the EMFA for fair and transparent distribution of public funds and state advertising to the media. Only media companies which have registered in the ownership database and provided up-to-date information about their direct and beneficial ownership should be eligible to receive state advertising.
● In addition, the government should consider establishing conditions that only media outlets which abide by the Ethical Code of Journalists should be eligible for receiving state advertising, as a means of defunding disinformation.
● Media professionals should unite with journalistic associations and other bodies to strengthen solidarity and cooperation within the journalistic profession.
More detailed recommendations will follow in the full report from the mission.
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The mission to Sofia was coordinated as part of the Council of Europe’s Safety of Journalists Platform and the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR). The delegation was composed of representatives from ARTICLE 19, Association of European Journalists (AEJ), European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), European Broadcasting Union (EBU), European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Index on Censorship, International Press Institute (IPI), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT).
The delegation met with a range of stakeholders, including leading journalists and editors from print, online and investigative media, as well as media associations and unions, media experts and civil society. Separate meetings were held with the Bulgarian National Radio and the Bulgarian National Television. Meetings were also held with the Bulgarian President; Ministry of Justice; Ministry of Interior; Council of Electronic Media (CEM); Office of General Prosecutor; Commission for Personal Data Protection; Central Election Commission and representatives of embassies.
The mission held a press conference on 26 September in Sofia. A full report is due to be published after the mission and will be shared with all domestic political stakeholders, the Council of Europe, the European Union and international organisations.
2 Sep 2025 | About Index, Asia and Pacific, China, Hong Kong, News and features, Newsletters
The Jimmy Lai trial wrapped up last week, without a verdict. When this will come is anyone’s guess. One of the three judges, Esther Toh, said it would be announced “in good time”.
For a man who has been wrongly imprisoned for more than 1,700 days, is in his late 70s, and has serious health conditions, “in good time” is gratingly noncommittal. Of course it’s likely intentional, a way to further punish him and his family. But there’s more to it. When it comes to Lai language has always been used to obfuscate, frustrate and discredit. Hong Kong authorities, the CCP and their allies frequently twist words, calling him and his supporters traitors and other slurs. They can be bold in their denigrations – and they can be seemingly subtle.
“I’ve lost count of the number of times the Chinese / Hong Kong authorities or CCP State media have called me a “so-called human rights lawyer” leading a “so-called legal team.”,” said one of Lai’s lawyers, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, this week on X. Gallagher made this comment following the release of a new report, titled “The Use of ‘So-called’ as a Propaganda Device in China”. By academics Linette Lim and Alexander Dukalsis (the latter an Index contributor), it looks at how China’s state-run media increasingly use inverted commas and the words so-called when talking about an idea or person that they wish to discredit.
It’s not a new trend nor is it unique to China, as the authors note (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used these linguistic tools too). Still, it’s growing in use there. Articles on Taiwan and Hong Kong will typically employ such language, as do ones on the USA. In fact the authors were struck by how many articles tried to delegitimise the USA and believe it’s “partly in response to more hawkish US policy towards China in recent years and partly accelerated by Xi Jinping’s increased domestic control and repression”.
The report is a helpful addition when considering how information is controlled under Xi Jinping, as was James Palmer’s piece in Foreign Policy last week labelled “A guide to Censorship in China”, which was based on his many years living and working there. In it Palmer describes the censorship machine as “messy”. While people can cover most sensitive topics in China, and Palmer says it’s relatively uncommon for authorities to outright refuse to publish something, the process is unpredictable, exhausting, artistically damaging and at times high stakes, putting many off. “In better times, publishers are willing to take risks, but those better times are a long way away,” wrote Palmer.
Better times do sadly feel very distant, though I’d imagine if pressed the CCP would say they’ll arrive “in good time”.
11 Aug 2025 | Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine
Since 7 October, 2023, Israel’s military campaign across the Gaza Strip has claimed the lives of more than 260 Palestinian journalists and media workers: men and women, who carried nothing but their cameras, microphones, and notebooks. They were not on the battlefield, they were the battlefield. Targeted, hunted, threatened and killed alongside their families in what can only be described as a deliberate campaign to silence the truth.
Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qreqeh, along with five more colleagues from Al Jazeera were the new victims of truth. They did not die because they were caught in “crossfire” or in a tragic accident. Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues were killed because he refused to be silenced. Because they exposed the atrocities and crimes of the Israeli military against innocent civilians in Gaza. They reported on the massacres, on the weaponisation of starvation and thirst, and on the relentless bombardment of residential neighborhoods.
Anas paid his life as a price for his truth-telling, and so did many other colleagues. They all met the same fate.
Before them, their parents and families were also killed. These were not isolated incidents. They are part of a systematic pattern.
This is how Israel’s war on Palestinian journalism works: first, it eliminates the voice; then it erases the family; and finally it seeks to bury the story.
I know this because I am living it. I am a journalist who has reported for years from Gaza City, and my own family there has been threatened. My home has been surrounded by fear like many more, reminding us that our reporting comes at a cost. These are not random acts of intimidation. They are part of the same machinery that murdered Anas and Mohamed, a machinery designed to frighten Palestinian journalists into silence.
It doesn’t stop at bullets and bombs. Israel wages an incitement campaign against Palestinian journalists, smearing them with baseless accusations and without presenting a shred of credible evidence.
The aim is clear: to strip us of legitimacy in the eyes of the world so that when we are killed, our deaths can be rationalised, excused, and forgotten.
These accusations are amplified when parts of the Western media adopt Israel’s unverified narrative – sometimes word for word – while those same foreign correspondents are themselves barred from entering Gaza.
Yes, Israel has kept international journalists out of Gaza since the start of this war. It is not only silencing Palestinian voices, it is preventing the world from seeing the truth through the eyes of all journalists.
This unprecedented media blockade means the only witnesses left inside Gaza are Palestinian journalists, who are being systematically hunted.
By killing them, Israel is not just destroying the local press, it is choking off the world’s last source of first-hand account from the Strip.
Some will call this a tragedy for Gaza. But it is more than that. It is a tragedy for journalism everywhere.
Each time a Palestinian journalist is killed for doing their job, a bullet tears through the very heart of global press freedom.
When one government can murder reporters with impunity, threaten their families, smear their reputations, and block the international media from entering, it sends a message to every repressive regime on the planet: You too can kill the story by killing the storyteller.
What happens in Gaza does not stay in Gaza. If Israel’s campaign to silence journalists succeeds here, it will embolden governments worldwide to use the same tactics: violence, intimidation, and narrative control to shield themselves from accountability.
The chilling effect will ripple far beyond the Gaza Strip and Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Journalists covering corruption, human rights abuses, atrocities and war crimes, will all feel the shadow of what is happening in Gaza.
Freedom of the press is not a slogan. It is the breath of democracy, the safeguard against tyranny, the public’s last line of defence against lies, manipulation and corruption.
In Gaza, that breath is being suffocated. And if the world does not act; if governments, media organisations, and press freedom advocates do not unite to hold Israel accountable, then the suffocation will spread.
Anas is gone. Mohamed is gone. Too many of my colleagues are gone. I do not know how much longer those of us still reporting from Gaza can keep going under this level of threat. But I do know this: as long as we have breath, we will speak. We will write. We will record. Because the truth is worth more than our fear, and the story of Gaza must not be buried with its journalists.
Silencing Palestinian journalists is not just an assault on Gaza’s truth. It is an assault on the world’s right to know. And the day we allow that assault to succeed is the day press freedom dies everywhere.
[Editor’s note: The IDF claims that al-Sharif had been a member of Hamas since 2013. Al-Sharif and Al Jazeera had previously called these claims “baseless”.]
15 Jul 2025 | Iran, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
Fatemeh Jamalpour: The cost of truth in Iran
When I was invited to co-write a story with an Israeli journalist, I asked myself: what could we possibly have in common? After 46 years of political hostility between the Islamic Republic and the State of Israel, it turned out we shared more than I expected. We are both inheritors of our countries’ proxy wars – and we both carry a shame that isn’t ours. It’s the shame of war-driven leaders, the shame of bombed hospitals and civilians buried beneath flags. Somehow, in that shared grief, shame became a point of connection.
Beyond the battlefield, we share something else: the impact of censorship and propaganda. Both governments declared the recent 12-day war – which left more than 930 people dead – a victory. But every civilian killed is not a victory; it’s a human life lost. In Iran, clerics have openly called for executions and mutilations of those who dare to criticise the Supreme Leader. Any dissent – even a tweet suggesting the Islamic Republic bears responsibility for the war – can lead to interrogation, summons or surveillance. In today’s Iran, truth has a cost – and more and more, that cost is freedom.
Starting on the fifth day of the Israel-Iran war, from 17-21 June, the Iranian regime imposed an almost complete internet shutdown, as reported by global internet monitor NetBlocks. Iranians were left not only without access to news but also without emergency alerts or evacuation warnings. The entire country was plunged into darkness – like a black hole – leaving defenceless civilians uncertain whether their neighbourhoods were in danger, or if they should flee.
Amid the chaos, parliament passed a law criminalising the use of Starlink internet.
“While they had cut off our internet – and during the war, I couldn’t get any news from my family and friends because both the internet and phone lines were down – I was sick with worry for every loved one,” said Leila, a 38-year-old woman from Shiraz. “And yet, when we try to access something that is our basic right, even after paying a hundred million tomans, we’re treated like criminals. These laws have no legitimacy.”
Meanwhile, the regime began targeting journalists’ families. Several relatives of reporters working with Persian-language outlets abroad, such as BBC Persian, were arrested, threatened, and labelled “enemies of God” – a charge that carries the risk of execution.
“I barely post on social media anymore because the space is under intense surveillance by security agents, and the pressure on journalists is suffocating,” said Raha Sham, 41, a parliamentary reporter in Tehran. “Many of my colleagues have received threatening phone calls. The tone is harsh, the intent clear: delete your tweets, your stories, your posts – or face the consequences.”
Iranians now face a new wave of repression in the aftermath of the war. Across cities, new checkpoints have sprung up where security forces stop civilians and search their phone photo galleries – often without a warrant. At the same time, parliament has passed new legislation effectively criminalising anti-war activism.
“Anti-war activism is a legitimate form of civic engagement, and criminalising it is both unjust and unlawful,” a human rights lawyer in Tehran who prefers to stay anonymous told me. “What disturbs me most about the post-war crackdown is that a spirit of vengeance has taken over the judiciary. Judges now seem to think their role is to avenge those who were killed. The mindset is: ‘Our commanders have died – someone must pay.'”
But the problem doesn’t end with the state. While we’re silenced by our government, we’re also erased by much of the Western media. For many editors, it’s always about numbers, not names. They want statistics, not stories. When Western journalists do gain access, they often report only from regime-approved rallies, while just a few streets away, anti-war protests and underground art scenes go unseen.
We’re rarely shown in full light. Middle Easterners remain blurred, devout, anonymous. After years of contributing to Western outlets, I’ve learned this isn’t an accident. It’s not just regime control. It’s also the residue of a colonial gaze – still shaping coverage in 2025.
David Schutz: Control of the press in Israel
In Israel, I was under missile fire too. While everyone else huddled in shelters, glued to the news, I stood on my roof watching what looked like fireworks. But if you Google “Iranian missile hit Tel Aviv Stock Exchange” in Hebrew, you’ll find nothing – you have to know where to look to piece together the truth.
Israel’s media has always been tightly controlled: military censors, a three-second delay on live broadcasts – a well-known fact that has been confirmed by inside sources. Today it’s slicker but more repressive than ever as global opposition to Israeli policies grows. The Israeli Journalists Association said recent moves by the government “seek to eliminate free media in Israel”. But it’s worth asking whether the press here was ever truly free.
Even before 7 October 2023, it operated under a mesh of dependent commercial interests and state funding with the military and government in what journalist Oren Persico from The Seventh Eye, an independent investigative magazine focused on the media in Israel, described as a “symbiotic relationship”.
After the election of the current government in 2022, bills have been brought forward that weaken public broadcasting, including proposals to give the government increased control of the public broadcaster’s budget – effectively letting the government starve it of funds should coverage stray too far.
“Very often, journalists effectively act as representatives for the institutions they cover: legal affairs reporters serve the prosecution and the judicial system, economic reporters serve the Finance Ministry, and military reporters naturally represent the positions of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” Persico said.
My friend Sapir runs a WhatsApp group called Demanding Full Coverage for Gaza.
“Almost nothing about Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe gets through to the Israeli public. Not because the information doesn’t exist, but because editors don’t cover it – and when they do, briefly, the military and government have a well-honed strategy to muddy the waters,” she said.
When Haaretz reported at the end of June that Israeli soldiers had been ordered to fire on civilians at an aid centre, counter-reports appeared almost immediately in multiple outlets – often repeating the same phrasing, the same anonymous interview – claiming “Hamas gunmen” had fired on crowds. The effect was the same: to muddy the story and deny a pattern of conduct.
“The goal is to flood the market with information so people think there’s no way to know what’s true anymore, to make them give up looking,” Sapir said.
Andrey X, an independent Israeli journalist, explained that all security-related stories must legally be cleared by military censors before publication. This can be justified on security grounds in some cases but critics argue it adds a significant challenge to media freedom. In practice, most outlets ignore this – until the government decides to enforce it retroactively, as in the case of American journalist Jeremy Loffredo, who was detained for four days and threatened with jail time over his reporting for The Grayzone, showing the locations of the military targets of Iranian missiles.
Footage of Israeli vehicles and homes hit by Israeli Hellfire missiles and tank shells on October 7 were labelled “Hamas attacks”. A government spokesman admitted 200 Hamas fighters were misidentified as civilians.
Twenty months later, Gaza is a demolished wasteland of dust and decay. The military releases sparse reports of “accidents”, just enough to recast outrage as tragic inevitability rather than accountability, enabling ongoing abuses without meaningful scrutiny.
Cable news will mention that the army had “begun food distribution”, but in such vague, antiseptic terms that few readers realise this means just a handful of stations, a framing that distorts what is actually happening and why.
Softer repression is often more powerful. Journalists fear being fired or defunded for not toeing the military spokesman’s line. Many fear public backlash even more: boycotts, pulled advertising and social media campaigns branding them traitors. Mildly subversive correspondents have faced on-air abuse – often in deeply personal terms – from their colleagues, as detailed by Persico when he spoke with me.
For Palestinian journalists, the dangers are greater still. Reporting on police or military abuses can end careers or worse. Even inside Israel, Arab reporters face social hostility, public threats and constant suspicion about their loyalty. The same event, covered by an Israeli and a Palestinian journalist, carries different risks, but that gap is always narrowing.
Each day, more people choose to shed the ideological masks their states have forced upon them in ’48 Palestine, Israel and Iran. Despite relentless propaganda and censorship, the number continues to grow. The future of our countries will not belong to war-hungry leaders – it is being shaped from the ground up, in the streets and in the digital space. In this age, every post, every story, every tweet by ordinary citizens is a quiet act of resistance – a revolution in itself.
This piece is published in collaboration with Egab, an organisation working with journalists across the Middle East and Africa
