From Gaza to Yemen, the worlds frontlines have become execution grounds for truth-tellers, writes DrJohn Jiggens.

SUNDAY2 NOVEMBERwas the United Nations International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists. Members and friends of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) gathered in BrisbanesReddacliff Placefor a vigil to mourn and remember their colleagues killed on duty, reporting on wars during the past year.

Addressing the vigil,Kasun Ubayasiri, the federal co-vice president of MEAAs National Media Section, said that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has recorded the death of 122 journalists and media workers around the world this year, killed while reporting in combat zones or on dangerous assignments in the previous twelve months.

A staggering 61 of these 122 were Palestinian journalists killed in Israel's war in occupied Gaza. Another 31 media workers were killed in a single day in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a newspaper building in Yemen. Three more were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a compound housing journalists in Lebanon.

All up, Israeli forces were responsible for 95 of the 122 deaths in the past year. The war in Sudan claimed another 13 journalists lives, the largest number in Africa. Another 14 media deaths were sprinkled around the many other global conflict zones.

An article in The Nightly highlights the dangerous power of language in framing Gaza, showing how media narratives can shift blame, obscure atrocities and influence public sentiment.

Like the 31 Yemeni deaths, many media workers were deliberately targeted, either at work or at home.

Maher Mughrabi, editor and senior journalist atThe Age, spoke about the death of his friend, photographerFatma Hassona, a Palestinianphotojournalistwho is the protagonist ofSepideh Farsis documentary,Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,killed by an Israelimissile strike in Gaza. She was 25.

In April, days after the photojournalist and ten members of her family were killed in an Israeli airstrike, the Western media reported that Fatma haddeclaredthat If I die, I want a loud death.

Mughrabi said:

The extraordinary photographs Fatma captured with her camera were not just a record of carnage and death, but also of how humans can still walk and work in a space of the worst of humanity.

I'm trying to find some life in this world, in this death, she told the Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi.

Chris Hedges recently gave the Edward Said memorial lecture to a sold-out audience at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.

Every second you walk in the street, you put your soul on your hand and walk, she added, giving the documentary that Farsi made about her its title. That film screened in Cannes in May. Fatima was killed the day after being invited to the premiere. Festival organisers remarked that this young woman's life force seemed like a miracle.

Mughrabi continued:

After the vigil remembering our colleagues, we wrote our names and placed flowers on a large banner with the names of all the dead journalists displayed.

This initiative of the MEAA to remember our colleagues was admirable. Israels strike on the Yemeni newspaper and the extraordinary number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza often with their families indicate that Israel regards journalists covering their wars as legitimate targets. However, I was disappointed to see I was one of the few journalists recording this important event.

Israels war on Gaza has been the single deadliest conflict for journalists ever. In August 2025,Al Jazeera estimatedthat more than 270Palestinian journalistsand media workers had been killed in IsraelswaronGaza a staggering figure.

According to Brown UniversitysCosts of Warproject, more journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began on 7 October 2023 than in all the wars since the U.S. Civil War, including World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East combined.

A former Media Watch presenter recently attempted to lecture Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges on what his role as a journalist should be, and it was embarrassing.

Australias mainstream media remains largely silent about Israels targeting of Palestinian journalists and the extraordinary number of our murdered colleagues.

Chris Hedgesone of the giants of contemporary journalism was in Australia recently to deliver theEdward Said memorial lecturefor the Adelaide Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA). Taking advantage of his presence in Australia, Hedges sponsors booked him to appear at the National Press Club (NPC) in Canberra to deliver a speech calledThe Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists. A date was set for Monday 20 October. Hedges speech promised to be an important intervention, highlighting the unprecedented targeting of journalists in Gaza.

However, three weeks before Hedges address, out of the blue, the Press Club cancelled his speech in the interest, they said, of balancing their program. Apparently, persons unknown worried that the NPC coverage of Israel and Gaza was becoming unbalanced. In the wake ofAntoinette Lattoufs dismissal from the ABC, rumours spread that the powerful Israel lobby had intervened. Proving Hedges charge, the cancellation of his speech confirmed theNPCs betrayal of Palestinian journalists.

Hedges supporters arranged another platform,an interview with David Marr, the anchor of the ABCsLate Night Liveprogram. Marr, a former host ofMedia Watch, disgraced himself,scolding Hedgesfor associating with AFOPA and trying to school one of the worlds great journalists for his alleged sins against the ABC journalism stylebook, bothsidesism.

A key point in their dispute came in the discussion of theIsrael Defence Forcesdenial of their assassination of the Palestinian journalist,Shireen Abu Akleh. Marr asserted the central doctrine of ABC journalism bothsideism.

Now, whether we like it or not, Marr told Hedges, as journalists, we have to report the excuses made by outfits like the IDF, don't we? We have to report their explanations. That's our job.

No, countered Chris Hedges: Our job is to report the truth.

While Israel has forbidden Western journalists from entering Gaza to observe the war, the only journalists reporting from the war zone are Palestinians, and they are being targeted and slaughtered on a massive scale. Secure from the horrors of war, ensconced in comfortable hotels in Jerusalem, their Western colleagues receive background briefings from the IDF and write their reports.

They repeat Israeli lies, which they know are lies, said Chris Hedges:

Before our eyes, a genocide that the Australian mainstream media refuses to name unfolds. While Palestinian journalists reporting the war are murdered on an industrial scale, Australian journalists, excluded from the war zone, claim to report both sides, the truth they can not see and the lies they are told.

DrJohn Jiggensis a writer and journalist currently working in the community newsroom atBay-FMin Byron Bay.

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