The work that reporters are doing in war zones is an extreme example of why the framers wrote the 1st Amendment. Information is powerful.
CNN anchor Sara Sidner was live on air from the West Bank when she was confronted by an angry pro-Palestine protester. He walked up to her quickly — getting within a couple of inches of her face — before yelling: “You are not welcome here, genocide supporters. … F— CNN.”
While Sidner remained calm during the encounter Friday, watching the scene unfold was quite disturbing. Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, at least 23 journalists have been killed covering the recent outbreak of violence. Three other journalists are unaccounted for.
Sidner and her crew were fortunate not to be harmed, but that doesn’t mean they are safe.
As images from the war make clear, in Israel and the occupied territories right now, there is no such thing as safe.
Not for children. Not for the elderly. Not even for those already ailing in the hospital.
According to the , photojournalist Muhammad Sobh was wearing a flak jacket, helmet and other protective gear when the building in which he and a colleague, Hisham al-Nawajah, were sheltering was hit by a bomb. They were both killed.
There’s a folksy saying in journalism: If one person says it’s raining and another says it’s not, a reporter’s job is not to quote them both but to look out the window and see whether it’s raining. Sometimes “going to the window” places journalists in harm’s way. How else would the world learn what’s going on?
The purpose of journalism hasn’t changed, but the reactions of politicians and the public are unrecognizable from the Walter Cronkite era.
During his first campaign for president, Donald Trump vilified journalists for his own political gain and whipped up supporters to harass them, dealing new damage to the already fractured trust between the electorate and the free press.
