Because of their sacred duty to truth, accuracy and objectivity, the American media employs thousands of dedicated women and men to disseminate domestic and international news. The press has long been called the “Fourth Branch” of the U.S. government.
And yet, due to partisan and ideological advocacy that often blurs the lines between fact and fiction, the press has had its issues. Too many among us are drawn to 24/7 cable news networks or quick digital updates that only reinforce their comfortable bubbles.
But when journalists are killed, imprisoned or banished because of the truth they speak to those in power, we all lose. Killing the truth is an assault on every citizen.
Think of Jamal Khashoggi vanishing in the labyrinth of Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul Embassy. Think, too, of the 232 Gaza journalists incinerated with U.S.-made weapons—compliments of us, the taxpayers.
Where Is the On-The-Ground Coverage?
In his July 28, 2025 column, Preaching to the Choir While Children Die: The Cost of Silence on Gaza, Craig Nash observed that while Good Faith Media (GFM) produces both news and opinion, “the reality is that we don’t have an on-the-ground presence in the Middle East. So any hard, breaking news coverage we might provide would simply be restating facts from established global news services.”
During America’s two Iraq wars, journalists were embedded with Pentagon handlers whose purpose was to filter the news into sanitized tales of good vs. evil, civilized vs. uncivilized. Reporting on the brutal 2004 assault on Fallujah, which killed thousands and pulverized a city, was whitewashed. Only independent voices later revealed the gruesome reality.
As for Mr. Nash’s point about lack of “on-the-ground presence”: Israel has never allowed reporters into Gaza. After Hamas’ October 7, 2023, assault, Western media erupted into a 24/7 frenzy recounting every gruesome act—so much so that fabricated stories became fact, without scrutiny.
Israel’s deliberate blackout on its own war crimes, from the starvation of civilians to the killing of aid workers, has been glossed over for months. Only Gaza’s journalists bore witness.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, run by evangelical Christian Zionist Johnnie Moore, has not allowed real reporting on its Machiavellian scheme to lure starving Gazans to isolated locations under the guise of aid distribution—only for them to be shot down. Yet the photo of a young boy scooping flour into his ragged t-shirt has become the cry for help for 2.3 million starving souls.
Even the Mediterranean shoreline, where Gazans once bathed and fished, is now off-limits under the watchful eyes of Israeli drones.
Target Practice
On August 10, Israel assassinated Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and five colleagues in a targeted airstrike on a journalists’ tent outside al-Shifa Hospital. The entire Gaza City bureau of Al Jazeera was wiped out in one strike.
According to Israeli hasbara, Anas was a Hamas operative. By that logic, every Palestinian man, woman, child, and fetus is Hamas, fit to be neutralized by drone, jet, or tank.
Brown University’s Watson Institute reported in April that 232 Gaza journalists had been killed by Israeli forces—the highest toll of any U.S.-supported war since the Civil War. Even more than the combined toll of both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Ukraine. Additionally, nearly 380 journalists have been wounded.
Israel has also destroyed Gaza’s communications networks and engaged in widespread repression of the press.
Even the dead are mocked. In May, Israeli journalist Jonathan Ofir reported soldiers were using slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s face for target practice. Shireen, a U.S. citizen, was executed by a sniper in 2022. The Biden administration never thoroughly investigated, never met with her family—yet he proudly declared himself “a Zionist to the core.”
What survives will be the images.
Goya’s Disasters of War captured the barbarity of Napoleon’s slaughter. Picasso’s Guernica immortalized the bombing of innocents. Gaza’s reporters, with their blood, cameras and microphones, will leave behind images etched into history, never to be forgotten.
The Cost of Silence
Meanwhile, silence reigns in America. Silence from journalists unwilling to challenge Israel. Silence from politicians who send $509 million worth of bombs while slashing human needs. Silence from evangelicals who cheer the destruction as holy writ.
And silence, as ever, is complicity.
Killing truth is not just censorship. It is a heinous assault on us all.
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Professor emeritus of English and art. Raouf is a writer, photographer, sculptor, an avid gardener and a peace activist.
