Did you see Jon Stewart interview CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last week? Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, said we need more journalists on the ground in Gaza. Although Stewart is a comedian (yes, I know), he challenged Amanpour’s stance. He said, actually, there are journalists on the ground in Gaza…but they are getting killed. Amanpour agreed and shared the horrible statistics: almost 100 journalists reporting from Gaza have been killed since October.

Palestinians are still reporting from Gaza, providing vital information on the devastation Palestinians face. This is something North American journalists have been unable to do, mainly because international journalists are not allowed into Gaza, except on controlled expeditions hosted by the Israel Defense Forces.

That makes Palestinian journalists a critical source of information. Yet most mainstream media outlets have not reshared their reporting.

For Amanpour, and many others, we still need our foreign correspondent, “our man in Gaza.” That foreign correspondent is supposed to be a neutral voice with outsider questions. They are assumed to be objective and independent.

But meanwhile, many western journalists including reporters from CNN and the New York Times have spoken out against their newsrooms’ “objectivity,” calling out their unbalanced coverage when it comes to the Middle East. They have said their organizations have pro-Israeli stances. Many have said they feel censored in their newsrooms.

These accusations bring up a lot of questions.

On this week’s podcast episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, I am joined by two experts to help answer them.

Sonya Fatah and Asmaa Malik are both associate professors of journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University. Their research focuses on newsroom culture, global reporting practices and equity in journalism.

Malik says: “The deep injustice that’s being done is that this work [of Palestinian journalists on the ground] isn’t being amplified…News organizations can amplify those voices, but also augment them and add to them and bring that human perspective to this cold clinical idea of ‘objectivity’ and reportage as we understand it.” Adds Fatah: “Instead of embracing them and instead of standing up and saying this is a huge crisis and we are in support, there has been silence.”

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