Local View: Never forget, always protect journalists, our 'voices for truth'

We recently attended a four-day convening of women leaders from throughout the Middle East and North Africa region and from the U.S. The gathering was held in Malta, chosen for its accessibility for attendees from Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, and Palestine. The women represented political leaders, academics, and members of civil society in their home countries.

Women from Israel and Palestine were unable to be present except on Zoom due to the conflict, uncertainty, and stress in their lives from the war that began with the Hamas attack on Oct. 7; only three women joined us remotely and briefly, two from Israel and one from Palestine.

Their physical absence was an elephant in the room, a ghostly, omnipresent reminder of the peril that they and their loved ones face.

We are now several weeks into this grievous conflict, and a difficult issue is emerging, inevitable in every conflict: Where is the truth? What should we believe in the narratives about this war? Who tells the stories, and how do we determine veracity and objectivity?

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has verified that from Oct. 7 through Nov. 1, 31 journalists are confirmed dead: 26 Palestinian, four Israeli, and one Lebanese. In addition, eight journalists are reported injured, and nine are reported missing or detained.

CPJ is also investigating numerous reports of other journalists killed, missing, detained, hurt, or threatened and of damage to media offices and journalists’ homes.

“This deadly toll is coupled with harassment, detentions and other reporting obstructions in areas that include the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, and in Israel,” CPJ said in an Oct. 29 statement .

These 48 journalists are civilians, and it remains unclear whether they were killed, injured, or detained in carrying out their work.

It is significant to consider the risks incurred by reporters. Imagine a world in which a conflict occurs without any news coverage. There would be no ability to understand the situation as it evolves in a war zone, to generate support for humanitarian aid, to establish tribunals to hold perpetrators responsible for acts of violence, or to lend dignity to the victims or victim-survivors through telling their stories. The work of these 48 journalists who are dead, injured, or missing was vital to knowing what is happening in this war.

Reporters are as necessary as soldiers to the conduct of war in this century, to establishing its context and ascertaining the truth of what occurs on the ground. Yet, reporters are often intentionally targeted to maintain silence or to distort what is disseminated to the public.

When we were in Malta, we met with Matthew Caruana Galizia. His mother, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was assassinated in 2017 when a bomb hidden in her car was detonated. Matthew was at the site and identified his mother’s dismembered body, writing on Facebook, "I looked down and there were my mother's body parts all around me."

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese journalist. For decades she had been investigating and exposing Malta’s government corruption through money-laundering; ties to organized crime’s activities in human trafficking, drug-running, and citizenship-by-investment, whereby non-Maltese outsiders pay to become documented Maltese and EU citizens; and other high-level criminal activities. The government harassed her, sued her for libel, and arrested her twice; yet she continued to write for Maltese papers and to publish her own blog, which garnered higher readership than all the country’s newspapers combined.

The bomb was the final effort to shut her up and shut her down.

Three people were prosecuted and imprisoned for planting the bomb, yet the ultimate masterminds have had impunity from legal reckoning. This impunity has two outcomes: It emboldens those who would silence free speech, and it terrifies those who would speak out.

Despite the danger, Matthew continues his mother’s legacy, including several years with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. His work on a major investigation led to the international consortium winning the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2017.

Today, Matthew leads the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, with a mission to end impunity for the murder of journalists and to support the work of investigative journalists.

We share the story of Daphne and Matthew Caruana Galizia to highlight the necessity of protecting journalists and a free press, never more important than during times of great crisis and terrible atrocity.

We grieve for all the journalists whose lives have been lost in the recent fighting and all those lost in the past. The War Reporters’ Memorial Garden in Bayeux, France, shares the names of more than 2,000 journalists killed throughout the world since 1944.

We must remember them — and protect and support today’s voices for truth.

Ellen J. Kennedy, Ph.D., is executive director of World Without Genocide at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul (worldwithoutgenocide.org), which works to protect innocent people, prevent genocide by combating racism and prejudice, and remember lives and cultures destroyed by violence. Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, is a co-founder of Forward Global Women (forwardglobalwomen.org), which promotes peaceful resolutions to conflicts in the Middle East and advocates for women in peacemaking. They wrote this for the News Tribune.