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For context, a total of 69 journalists were killed in WWII, 63 in the Vietnam war both of which lasted several years. As of today March 6th 2024, the Gaza invas
by moshun 3y ago
For context, a total of 69 journalists were killed in WWII, 63 in the Vietnam war both of which lasted several years. As of today March 6th 2024, the Gaza invasion has left 86 journalists dead in less than 4 months. That is an amazingly high percentage for the expected mean in a conflict.
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2024/israel-gaza-war-journalists-killed-cpj/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2024/israel...
https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2024/02/over-75-of-all-journalists-killed-in-2023-died-in-gaza-war-per-cpj/ https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2024/02/over-75-of-all-jour...
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/world/middleeast/30embed.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/world/middleeast/30embed....
- boringg 3y agoThat may be true but a couple things have changed since those very dated sample points. (1) Definition of journalist (2) quantity of journalists (3) willingness to be on the very front lines in order to get better stories (4) technology enabling journalists thus being able to be more dangerous spots. (5) speculation -> journalists who are using press credentials as cover I'm neither way on the conflict but want to correct some of your arguments assumptions that lead your conclusion astray.
- henry2023 3y agoAre we seeing the same percentage of journalists killed by the Russian army in Ukraine?
- boringg 3y agoTotally different war structure.
- ethanbond 3y agoThe onus of protecting journalists (and medical workers) falls on the military regardless of how difficult the war they’re trying to prosecute is. How many journalists did the US kill in 20 years of OEF/OIF?
- boringg 3y agoI'm not condoning the death of anyone. I am however pointing out the very significant differences between what the original comment is referring to and what is happening and what might be driving the largest (if true) difference in numbers.
- ethanbond 3y agoI didn’t say you were. I am pointing out a more directly analogous war to demonstrate that similar militaries have waged similar wars against similar adversaries for far, far greater spans of time yielding far fewer journalist deaths. I am also pointing out that “this war is extra hard to prosecute” is not actually justification for certain actions. The difficulty of fighting the war falls on the people fighting the war, including the difficulty of protecting civilians during that war. What else would any standards or laws mean if that weren’t the case? The whole premise of these standards is to set a ceiling on what sort of awful conditions can be allowed during warfare.
- ryanwhitney 3y agoThirteen for OIF: https://cpj.org/reports/2006/01/js-killed-by-us-13sept05/ https://cpj.org/reports/2006/01/js-killed-by-us-13sept05/
- ninininino 3y ago> The onus of protecting journalists (and medical workers) falls on the military regardless of how difficult the war they’re trying to prosecute is. No it doesn't? Just searched the International Criminal Court's English document on war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity for 'journalist' and found no results. https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Elements-of-Crimes.pdf https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Ele...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ethanbond 3y ago
- mateo1 3y ago[flagged]
- throwaway894345 3y ago[flagged]
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- woooooo 3y agoThe Israelis are the ones setting those parameters and creating the conditions, though. It's not a "gotcha" to point out that journalists are also affected along with the other noncombatants.
- throwaway894345 3y ago[flagged]
- Qem 3y ago> but all you can muster is evidence that journalists are not being targeted but are rather being killed at rates of other civilians. No, they are being killed at much faster rate, to the point of depletion in relation to other civilians. Look at this plot: https://imgur.com/a/SWNSYOn https://imgur.com/a/SWNSYOn In my first post in this thread I did a detailed estimate that for the curve to bend this way, the journalists must be decimated with odds between 51:1 - 96:1 higher when compared to other civilians. This post got heavily downvoted and now sits at the bottom of the thread, but you can read the full explanation there.
- kaba0 3y agoIs it actually a reasonable assumption that journalists die at the same rate as civilians? Arguably, journalists are much more susceptible to go to dangerous places, close to actual combat, etc, for better videos.
- wolverine876 3y agoIt's a very imperfect comparison, but at least it's a factual basis. If you have better data, please share it.
- karim79 3y agoI agree. In Ukraine, combatants are not fighting from within an overpopulated prison camp.
- incognos 3y agoSorry, correction, Concentration Camp would be a proper term in this case. Prison implies a crime, the only crime is that they are born in an occupied land by a brutal occupier.
- hathym 3y agoagree, this is not war. this is a genocide
- pvg 3y agoYes if you google 'how many journalists died in WW2' in Russian you get numbers from a couple of hundred to over a thousand for the Soviet Union alone. The 69 number listed at https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/world/middleeast/30embed.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/world/middleeast/30embed.... is almost certainly just US journalists.
- sitkack 3y agoThe vast majority of all deaths in the WW2 were Soviet. The Soviet Union really deserves the gold medal position for winning WW2.
- Wolfenstein98k 3y ago[flagged]
- sitkack 3y ago[flagged]
- brtln 3y ago[flagged]
- shiroiushi 3y agoI thought it was started by the guy who murdered Archduke Ferdinand.
- hef19898 3y agoThat was WW1, and even then it was Austria-Hungary's reaction to it, backed by Germany in combination with the political climate that started it.
- shiroiushi 3y ago
- wolverine876 3y ago> (1) Definition of journalist (2) quantity of journalists (3) willingness to be on the very front lines in order to get better stories (4) technology enabling journalists thus being able to be more dangerous spots. How have these things changed, and how have the changes affected the number of journalists killed? The changes could reduce the number. My point is, we need much less speculation and possibilities, and much more credible fact. CPJ provides some credible fact.
- czl 3y agoInternet does not allow nearly all to be publishers? Does not foster many small online news sources? Has number of news sources not gone up with rise of the internet? Outsourcing of news collection by global news sources to (technology connected) hired locals has not gone up? Number doing (and claiming to be doing) journalism has not gone up?
- hmcq6 3y agoBut the claim isn't that a guy who happened to be on TikTok at the time was hit by a bomb. The claim is Israel is killing people in bright blue vests marked PRESS and in cars with PRESS written across the sides and roof.
- chefandy 3y agoTFA has a list of those included, who they worked for, and the circumstances of their death. I saw one that was only credited with having a podcast (which has 225k followers on their instagram account,) and a few others that seemed to work for smaller local websites and whatnot, but it seems like the vast majority had affiliations with established news agencies.
- akira2501 3y ago1) Small size of theater. 2) Asymmetry between forces. 3) No escape route.
- Auracle 3y agoYou also forgot (6) fighting a force that doesn't wear uniforms.
- incognos 3y agoThey do... the qassam brigades (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qassam+brigades&atb=v340-1&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qassam+brigades&atb=v340-1&iax=ima...) Besides, not sure Israel would allow them to import the uniforms.
- inemesitaffia 3y agoThey can get them the same way they acquire other things
- tyingq 3y agoSome of the individual incidents do point pretty strongly to deliberate acts. The incidents in Lebanon, for example, rule out a lot of the "proximity" reasoning, as do the methods and types of weapons.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwaway69123 3y agoIf your using other wars as a comparison like this what was the journalist per capita and have you adjusted for the prewar ratio per capita also. This seems like ham fisted attempts at statistics otherwise
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- stefan_ 3y ago[flagged]
- ars 3y agoAnd for comparison 715 were killed in Syria. "Of the 715, the Syrian regime was responsible for the killing of 553 journalists, including five children, one woman, five foreign journalists, and 47 journalists who died due to torture, while 24 journalists were killed at the hands of Russian forces." https://snhr.org/blog/2023/05/03/on-world-press-freedom-day-snhr-issues-its-annual-report-on-the-most-notable-violations-against-media-workers-in-syria/ https://snhr.org/blog/2023/05/03/on-world-press-freedom-day-...
- bombcar 3y agoFive children journalists?
- polygamous_bat 3y agoYou've never seen a high school or a college newspaper?
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoThat war is going on for 12 years and Assad dropped Chemical Weapons on Cities. You shouldn't be in the same order of magnitude as that number.
- screye 3y agoThat's a remarkably small number. It makes me think journalists weren't present in the warzone at all. Irrespective of which side you support, Hamas is notorious for colocating themselves among civilians. An elevated civilian death count, including journalists is to be expected. However, the numbers being THIS high in this short a time is alarming and tragic.
- pests 3y ago> An elevated civilian death count, including journalists is to be expected. Is it???
- brink 3y agoYes? Use your basic reasoning. Hamas fights in civilian clothing, they hide in civilian buildings, they hide in hospitals. They use regular civilians as shields. This is not your average fight; Hamas hates their enemy more than they love their own country.
- pests 3y agoMaybe another method is needed then? If you can't tell innocent people from legit targets... rethink the approach? Here is my reasoning: they hide in civilian clothes, okay let's not shoot civilians. They hide in hospitals, okay let's not bomb hospitals. They use civilian buildings, okay let's not bomb civilian buildings. They use civilians as shields... let's not shoot the shields. How is that unreasonable?
- samatman 3y ago[flagged]
- bawolff 3y agoEssentially that implies Israel will get shot at and not be allowed to shoot back. I suspect most Israelis would find that unreasonable. Israeli civilians don't like being killed anymore than Palestinian civilians do. The thing that usually prevents war is that both sides lose in the end. If only one side is allowed to shoot, why would the side being allowed to shoot ever stop? They would be getting all the benefits of war with none of the drawbacks.
- mschuster91 3y ago[flagged]
- eropple 3y agoThe framing of Gazans as a whole as "Hamas's people" is at best problematic; Hamas is an accelerationist and revolutionary movement that believes that dead Gazans advance their aims. Israel seems pretty happy to help Hamas out with proving out their theory right now, but it's important to note that a Gazan could've been born and raised literally to the age of majority without getting a chance to vote on whether they think Hamas is doing right by them.
- bawolff 3y agoIt is always true that governments don't fully represent their people. Some do more than others, but i am not sure how it matters. The fact is that hamas was in control of gaza and taking military action on its behalf. Whether ordinary Gazans approve is besides the point other than perhaps making it more tragic. As an example, we don't say ukraine shouldn't defend themselves from russia because russian elections were rigged even though they clearly are.
- BriggyDwiggs42 3y agoIf Ukraine, in response to Russia’s invasion, did something remotely equivalent to Israel’s actions so far, they’d rightly be condemned by most people. It matters whether gazans approve because people use their approval as pretext for bombing them.
- mschuster91 3y ago> The framing of Gazans as a whole as "Hamas's people" is at best problematic I fully agree with you on everything you said. Doesn't change the fact though that the blame for all the Palestinian casualties cannot be laid on Israel, not even by international law - as Hamas, the (more or less) legitimate government of Gaza, abused civilian infrastructure, they stripped it from the legal protection against military action. I mean... what's the alternative? Let Hamas continue to exist, only to have them regroup and announce the next intifada in a few years? There's no way Israel can (or will) accept that - even if the USA and EU completely withdraw any support, for any Israeli government the first priority is the survival of the nation.
- CydeWeys 3y agoThat 69 figure cannot be remotely close to accurate. Millions of civilians died from mass bombing campaigns alone, which certainly killed many journalists working for local outlets in those cities! Each atomic bomb on its own probably killed more than 69 journalists.
- dang 3y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39619763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39619763. This is not a moderation scolding—I'm just trying to prune the top-heaviest subthreads.