The Committee to Protect Journalists and 18 other press freedom and human rights organizations issued a statement supporting a call from members of the U.S. Congress, led by Rep. Jim McGovern, asking the Biden-Harris administration to urge Israel to allow independent access to Gaza for U.S. and international journalists, in the interest of transparency, accountability, and press freedom.
While more than 4,000 international journalists have traveled to Israel to cover the ongoing war, Israel continues to deny them access to Gaza except for rare and tightly controlled military-led press tours to the war-torn territory. This effective ban on foreign reporting has placed an impossible and unreasonable burden on Palestinian reporters in Gaza to document an ongoing war through which they are living.
In July, CPJ coordinated a public call by more than 70 media and civil society organizations asking Israel to give journalists independent access to Gaza.
You can read the statement here.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.