It’s time to come clean about reporting from unfree societies

The media is not transparent enough about the limitations of reporting from places run by thugs. Examples, from Russia to Gaza to North Korea and also China, abound.

The Gaza war has become a story not just about suffering, siege, and struggle — but about storytelling. Amid rising global outrage over hunger and civilian death, the role of the media is now under the spotlight — again. This week, a German investigation by Süddeutsche Zeitung alleged that viral images of Palestinians pleading for food were staged for propaganda purposes.

Many Israelis seized on the report to suggest the suffering itself is exaggerated. That’s not quite right: The humanitarian crisis is real, the death toll staggering, and no one should use journalistic failures to downplay the catastrophe. But the deeper point — that some of the imagery shaping global opinion may not be authentic — is not easily dismissed. And it raises hard questions about how journalism functions in places that aren’t free. The media has answering to do.

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Gaza is a singularity in a way. Few conflicts in modern history have unfolded in such conditions: a densely populated enclave, blockaded by both Israel and Egypt, ruled by a jihadist militia openly committed to the destruction of its nuclear-armed neighbor that is completely fed up and behaving wildly. It is a warzone, a prison, and a propaganda lab. Its civilians are victims. Its rulers are crazed tyrants. Its stories emerge from a fog of trauma, fear, and ideology. There may be no precedent.

But Gaza is also just a extreme case study of a broader problem that is not uncommon. Around the world, journalists operate in places like North Korea, Iran, Russia, Cuba — where there is no press freedom and the risks of honest reporting are real. Yet almost never do media outlets clearly explain this to the reader or viewer. The lack of transparency feeds a skepticism that is already gnawing at the media in the West, for other, domestic reasons. It also distorts public understanding of what journalism is and isn’t.

I bear some responsibility myself. I was the Associated Press’s Middle East editor, overseeing coverage from Gaza, Iran, Syria, and other unfree places from 2011 to 2018. In Gaza, our staff was based largely on local reporters, videographers and photographers, who took great risks to work with us. We tried to hire people of integrity and strong ethics. I believe, overwhelmingly, we succeeded. But Gaza is not a free press environment, and hasn’t been since Hamas took it over, expelling the Palestinian Authority in 2007.

The situation is worse today than ever, of course. Foreign journalists are not allowed in — unless embedded with the IDF, which is anyway rare. The FPA, which I once chaired, has been calling on Israel to open access. Israel refuses, citing the real danger to foreign reporters. That leaves the world totally reliant on local freelancers, who work in constant proximity to Hamas. There’s no need for explicit censorship. As in any mafia state, people know what happens if they cross the powerful. The threat is implied — and very real.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung investigation focused on a viral image of Gazans banging pots in front of a food truck, reportedly choreographed by a photographer working for Turkey’s state news agency, Anadolu. That photographer, according to the report, had also posted militant slogans and anti-Israel imagery online. I cannot confirm the claim, and can say that such conduct was not typical in my time.

But in an environment like Gaza, could it happen? Sure. This is inevitable always, and doubly so in unfree societies. And it’s a conversation the media must now have. When the public sees photos and stories from places where press freedom is nonexistent, it deserves to be told — clearly and repeatedly — that the reporting environment is compromised. Not buried in the fine print. Not once a decade. But as part of the reporting itself. Perhaps not every story needs it. But the standard should be: when journalism is constrained, say so.

That idea has been floated before — sometimes by critics with agendas. Former AP staffer Matti Friedman has argued that he was forced to suppress coverage critical of Hamas during earlier Gaza wars. I reject his core claims (which, to be fair, focused on the 2008-9 war which preceded my tenure). But in general, contrary to his claims, we did publish images of militants, and we did document Hamas rocket fire from civilian areas. We reported on the use of human shields. But was our coverage shaped, at times, by the fears of local staff? It would be dishonest to deny the possibility. Friedman, an eloquent but arrogant flawed messenger, exaggerated grievously, focused on AP unfairly, betrayed colleagues and limited his claims to one conflict — but the issue he raised is real.

And it goes far beyond Gaza. The global press often reports from authoritarian states — and almost never acknowledges the constraints involved. We don’t generally tell the reader that our reporters are operating under surveillance, threat, or risk of retaliation. Maybe it’s awkward and complicates the narrative. But amid cratering trust in journalism, it is no longer tenable to omit this information. The public must understand how the news is made.

And this may be a domestic conversation too. When reporters cover the organized crime in the United States – some no less brutal than the mafia called Hamas – are they operating without fear? I’m not so sure.

Meanwhile, Israel — which justifiably complains about distorted coverage — has done little to help itself. By closing off Gaza to most foreign journalists and offering little consistent messaging, it has abandoned the information space. Into that vacuum pours the content Hamas wants seen: hungry children, crying women, wreckage and ruin. Israel’s silence reads like guilt.

Gaza may be unique, but it is also the tip of an iceberg. Journalism must reckon with the fact that it is often shaped by forces it cannot control — fear, access, proximity to power. That does not invalidate the work. But it does mean we owe the public more honesty. It is a well-worn cliché that truth is the first casualty of war. But it doesn’t have to be. If journalists want to preserve truth, they must start by telling the truth about the conditions under which they work.