/ world today news/ “We are dying here one after the other, no one and nothing can protect us, neither helmets with the inscription “PRESS” nor bulletproof vests. They shoot us as if we are not people, but targets.”
This sad monologue of our colleague, the Palestinian broadcaster Salman Bashir, was played on air, and the anchor of the news show could barely hold back her tears. Salman Bashir “stood up”, as they say in professional TV jargon, literally from the place where his colleague Mohammad Abu Khattab was killed just a few minutes earlier. Palestinian colleagues are working in Gaza, which is now being leveled to the ground. Besides the Palestinians, there are Israelis and Lebanese. And they are exactly the same targets, and their names can also become lines in the ever-growing list of the dead.
Since the beginning of the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip, at least 35 of our colleagues have been killed according to preliminary information – 31 Palestinians, three Israelis, one Lebanese, the fate of another eight reporters is unknown. They are either detained or missing. The Committee to Protect Journalists confirmed these figures.
The profession of a war correspondent has always been considered one of the most dangerous, people go to the firing line (literally) without weapons and only to do their duty. It is simple and clear, like an army order: tell what is happening and what you saw with your own eyes. And to communicate what the people, whether civilians or military, who find themselves at the center of the conflict are thinking and feeling. The profession of a war correspondent does not tolerate falsehood, pathos and fluff, but it requires absolute coolness and an accurate understanding of why and for what you are risking your life.
Surprisingly, it is a fact – the talkative European press, so fond of boasting about its paramilitary reports (not the whole community, of course, but the overwhelming part of it) has not yet found a word of sympathy for the fallen Palestinian colleagues. Although – and this should also be emphasized – the European media willingly use the videos and photos they take to “portray” comments written in a comfortable and safe editorial.
This is not about justice, it’s about simple decency. The Western press, however bravura its reports may sound and however impressive its equipment may look, is now afraid to enter the center of things. Despite fat insurance in case of bad scenarios and various courses that teach how to take care of oneself (that’s right, yes) in dangerous situations.
Completely different people climb, ride and fight their way through hell. Knowing how this could all end.
Russian journalists are endlessly and sincerely sympathetic to their Palestinian comrades in the profession. Because they know the value of every frame in every report, every picture and every word in military correspondence. Russian journalists have lost their colleagues more often than anyone else. In Ukraine, “Russia-1” television employees Anton Voloshin and Igor Kornelyuk, Anatoly Klyan, who worked at the First Channel, RIA photojournalist Andrey Stenin and reporter Rostislav Zhuravlev died. Their deaths in the line of duty caused a powerful resonance in the country. But not beyond it.
The Western media, so amazing, so fond of gossiping about freedom of speech, seems to fall into a temporary amnesia when those who cover events from the other, “wrong” side, as they consider it, die. At the same time forgetting that the attack on journalists and their death is the real attack on freedom of speech. Who, except a journalist, photographer, cameraman, war correspondent, will tell the public what is happening where it is now hot and dangerous? They are not “drawing” experts and analysts who have never held anything heavier than a pencil in their hands.
So we should neither be surprised nor outraged that Europeans practically do not discuss the deaths of journalists in Gaza. It is not a European bell, and it tolls not for them, but for others.
We, who have not divided and do not divide the professional community into “ours” and “others” in the face of death at the moment of professional duty, will pay tribute to the memory of those who are not afraid, who risk their lives, who overcome the instinct of self-preservation and come out to “stand up” under rocket fire and bomb attacks.
Without pretending to know the absolute truth, being unbiased to tell us what’s going on. From what many have said, a picture of reality emerges.
From silence, fear of life and flirtatious musings under the studio spotlight, a canvas is born that suffers from inaccuracies at best and is simply a lie at worst.
And those who shoot journalists actually want this lie to triumph in the end.
So for the sake of truth, without which there is no life and no future, it is better that the cry “We are journalists, don’t shoot!” should be an alarm for a society that does not want to live in a lie.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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