Los Angeles Times Pressmens 20 Year Club: Los Angeles Times will be blocking reporters from covering Gaza

By Brett Levy

The Los Angeles Times will be blocking reporters from covering Gaza for three months after at least 16 of its journalists signed an open letter criticizing Israel, according to Semafor. I was trying to do a post on this letter two days ago, but was having trouble finding who signed it until today. The list now shows 1,252 overall signatories at the bottom of the letter that I provide a link to at the end of this post. Please keep any discourse about this topic civil:

The Los Angeles Times is prohibiting staff from covering the Gaza war for at least three months if they signed a strongly-worded open letter criticizing Israel’s military operations in the region.

Earlier this month, nearly a dozen staffers at the LA Times signed the open letter condemning the Israeli government’s bombing of Gaza, and saying the military operations were harming journalists and threatening newsgathering. The letter also called on newsrooms to use language including “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “genocide” when referring to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

Two people with knowledge of the situation told Semafor that staffers who signed the letter have been told by the paper’s management that they will not be allowed to cover the conflict in any way for at least three months.

The letter, published earlier this month and signed by 600 current and former journalists, called for an end to Israeli military actions in Gaza which it said represented a “slaughter of our colleagues and their families by the Israeli military and government.” The letter laid out an estimate of the number of journalists and their families who had been killed in the conflict, saying Israel’s military actions “show wide scale suppression of speech.”

But it also expressed strong criticism of mainstream news organizations, which it described as too timid in their coverage of the war.

The letter argued that some news outlets have been “hesitant to quote genocide experts and accurately describe the existential threat unfolding in Gaza,” and that newsroom leaders often “undermined Palestinian, Arab and Muslim perspectives, dismissing them as unreliable and have invoked inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes.”

“We are writing to urge an end to violence against journalists in Gaza and to call on Western newsroom leaders to be clear-eyed in coverage of Israel’s repeated atrocities against Palestinians,” the letter said.

And:

The LA Times did not respond to a request for comment. But earlier this week, LA Times top editor Kevin Merida reminded staff of the company’s ethics and fairness policy, which stated that a “fair-minded reader of the Times news coverage should not be able to discern the private opinions of those who contributed to that coverage, or to infer that the organization is promoting any agenda.”

“Feeling heard and seen are essential to a healthy newsroom, as are civility and collective responsibility. Rigor, fairness, dissent, difference, can all co-exist as qualities that lead to the best journalism,” Merida wrote in a company-wide email. “But we must maintain the integrity of that journalism, which is core to our reputation. Journalism itself is an agent for change. Having a compass to guide that work ensures that we don’t imperil it, or inadvertently cause harm to our colleagues’ ability to do their jobs,” he wrote.

Here is the wording of the letter, dated Nov. 9, 2023:

Israel’s devastating bombing campaign and media blockade in Gaza threatens newsgathering in an unprecedented fashion. We are running out of time.

More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s four-week siege. Included in the mounting death toll are at least 36 journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in what the group calls the deadliest conflict for journalists since it began tracking deaths in 1992. Scores more have been injured, detained, gone missing or seen their family members killed.

As reporters, editors, photographers, producers, and other workers in newsrooms around the world, we are appalled at the slaughter of our colleagues and their families by the Israeli military and government.

We are writing to urge an end to violence against journalists in Gaza and to call on Western newsroom leaders to be clear-eyed in coverage of Israel’s repeated atrocities against Palestinians.

Reporters in the besieged Gaza Strip are contending with extensive power outages, food and water shortages and a breakdown of the medical system. They have been killed while visibly working as press, as well as at night in their homes. An investigation from Reporters Without Borders also shows deliberate targeting of journalists during two Oct. 13 Israeli strikes in South Lebanon, which killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists.

Reporters’ families have been killed, too. Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief and a household name in the Arab world, learned on-air Oct. 25 that his wife, children, and other relatives had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. A Nov. 5 strike on the home of journalist Mohammad Abu Hassir of Wafa News Agency killed him and 42 family members.

Israel has blocked foreign press entry, heavily restricted telecommunications and bombed press offices. Some 50 media headquarters in Gaza have been hit in the past month. Israeli forces explicitly warned newsrooms they “cannot guarantee” the safety of their employees from airstrikes. Taken with a decades-long pattern of lethally targeting journalists, Israel’s actions show wide scale suppression of speech.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has urged Western journalists to publicly condemn the targeting of journalists. “[We] call on our fellow journalists around the world to take action to stop the horrifying bombardment of our people in Gaza,” the group said on Oct. 31 in a published statement.

We are heeding that call.

We stand with our colleagues in Gaza and herald their brave efforts at reporting in the midst of carnage and destruction. Without them, many of the horrors on the ground would remain invisible.

We join press associations including Reporters Without Borders, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association and the International Federation of Journalists in demanding an explicit commitment from Israel to end the violence against journalists and other civilians. Western newsrooms benefit tremendously from the work of Gazan journalists and must take immediate steps to call for their protection.

We also hold Western newsrooms accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Double-standards, inaccuracies and fallacies abound in American publications and have been well-documented. More than 500 journalists signed an open letter in 2021 outlining concerns that U.S. media outlets ignore Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Yet the call for fair coverage has gone unanswered.

Newsrooms have instead undermined Palestinian, Arab and Muslim perspectives, dismissing them as unreliable and have invoked inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes. They have printed misinformation spread by Israeli officials and failed to scrutinize indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza — committed with the support of the U.S. government.

Since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, in which more than 1,200 Israelis, including four journalists, were killed and some 240 others captured, these issues have compounded. News coverage has positioned the attack as the starting point of the conflict without offering necessary historical context — that Gaza is a de facto prison of refugees from historic Palestine, that Israel’s occupation is illegal under international law, and that Palestinians are bombarded and massacred regularly by the Israeli government.

U.N. experts have warned they are “convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide," yet Western outlets remain hesitant to quote genocide experts and accurately describe the existential threat unfolding in Gaza.

This is our job: to hold power to account. Otherwise we risk becoming accessories to genocide.

We are renewing the call for journalists to tell the full truth without fear or favor. To use precise terms that are well-defined by international human rights organizations, including “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” To recognize that contorting our words to hide evidence of war crimes or Israel’s oppression of Palestinians is journalistic malpractice and an abdication of moral clarity.